Wales in Space
“I’m interested in space from a more social rather than scientific perspective,What happens when you work together with someone on something that brings you closer to outer space?”
The result is a full-fledged space suit made solely from Welsh materials and using traditional craftsmanship. Hefin asked Melin Tregwynt to participate and we gave him some fabric (St David’s Cross Indigo) which he used for the spacesuit.
The suit is made of the fabric woven in the last remaining wool mills in Wales. The astronaut boots are traditional Welsh clogs crafted by a traditional clog maker. The whole pressure system that will enable the astronaut to sustain life in outer space was built by a Welsh plumber.
The work is not solely about making a series of space garments, it’s also about catapulting these people into entirely new ambitions and dreams and discussing with them the possibility of sending local crafts and skills into space. “The project facilitates participatory speculation, in which the people are invited into the construction of cosmic objects, and their experience during this process allows them to speculate about the different possibilities of their skill.”