My NSAT-110

2007

Plywood, waste paper, steel

Lifesize

"My NSAT-110" is a full size reproduction of a Japanese communications satellite that is currently 35000kms above the earth in geostationary orbit at E110. This object is part an invisible web of technology that floats above our head and enables everyday technologies such as mobile telephones and television that are so much a part of contemporary life. In Tokyo, as in Australia, you are never far from a mobile telephone. As you read this, there is a mobile telephone somewhere, close by you. However, while we are aware that there are satellites above us, linking these very ordinary little objects together, few of us really think about what they are as things. What do they look like? How big are they? What does it feel to stand next to one? We do not even wonder at such questions any more. Like much of the technology that surrounds us, satellites like NSAT-110 disappear. If they do exist to us, they exist solely as images - usually without scale, context, presence or physicality.

"My NSAT-110" is part of a series of projects, such as "My Voyager (2004)" and "My Lunar Rover (2005)", that explore this contemporary situation - which might be called the disappearance of objects into images. While we cannot touch these objects, we experience them in other ways, often without even realising it. NSAT-110 is so far away that you cannot see it, but it is possible that your next telephone call might go through it. The only way we can experience these objects is as pictures. I am interested in the difference between seeing an image of something and standing beside it. My sculptures represent these objects at full size, forcing them into the new context of the gallery space and allowing the viewer access to their physical reality.

I see my process as 'un-digitising'. I take images and information that I find on the internet and then use this to create full size 're-enactments' of the object. My materials are simple and ordinary, primarily plywood, and in the case of the Kandada project, discarded paper from the printers nearby. While my sculptures are the same size and shape as the real objects, they are not exact reproductions. They are filtered through my process and constructed from everyday materials. As such they take on aspects of their new context. NSAT-110 becomes "My NSAT-110".