Fine art pigment print on Rosaspina paper 400gsm Edition of 8 85 x 62cm
LUNAR MODULE Sheyne Tuffery Artist in Residence Carter Observatory, Wellington May 14 - August 2, 2019,
This body of work is an artists response to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. What began as speculation into why we haven’t been back to the moon, transformed into an overwhelming astonishment of what they achieved. With this work I want people to have a closer look at what they did.
My visual response focuses on the spiritual journey of the astronauts upon leaving the Earth's atmosphere. What would that do to your soul and mind? Apollo 8 ’s mission of circumnavigating the moon for the first time was the first time we had a photograph of our entire planet. The earth had never been seen before from space. It was the image that helped launch the environmental movement of the late 1960s.
Seeing that image made people think of all of us together rather than separate nationalities, it gave people hope. The works on paper are a combination of NASA images and my photographs from the South Coast of Wellington, where the rocks remind me of a lunar surface. The artworks start off as enhanced photographs take by me of the South Coast of Wellington, which is then passed through many filters in photoshop and then mixed in with the Nasa images on top