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\nThe winner of ESA\u2019s \u2018Graffiti without Gravity\u2019 street art competition has left a permanent mark on the Agency\u2019s technical heart, with this mural on the wall next to ESA\u2019s Compact Antenna Test Range.\n<\/p>\n
\nIrish street artist Shane Sutton<\/a> won the Graffiti without Gravity<\/a> competition in May. Jointly organised by ESA and the Hague Street Art, 10 top street artists from across Europe competed live to create artworks across 2×2 m canvases.\n<\/p>\n \nThen, as a result, ESA\u2019s antenna testing team invited Shane to decorate the entrance to their Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR)<\/a>, used to test satellite antennas in space-like conditions.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis gave me more than six times bigger than the competition canvas to work with,\u201d says Shane. \u201cAnd the wall incorporates a corner, so I included related images on each side. It\u2019s fun to paint such a large work \u2013 for me it\u2019s all about giving things a go.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nIt took Shane two and a half days to finish. The mural shows an astronaut in contact with ESA\u2019s Rosetta mission like someone holding a puppet on string, representing the use of antennas \u2013 essential to link space missions with their homeworld. Its background shows the \u2018anechoic\u2019 foam spikes that line the walls of the CATR, serving to absorb radio signals and reproduce the boundless void of space.\n<\/p>\n \nHe explains: \u201cFor what I call my \u2018Spacer\u2019 paintings<\/a> I like to use the narrative of \u2018that space in between\u2019 \u2013 which I describe as the place after you leave but before you get there. It\u2019s somewhere we all go at some point and I like to represent this through faceless astronaut paintings.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cThe idea for the artwork gets sketched out first, then I scale it up for the space using a grid, adding different colours to the various blocks as I go, with pure white coming last.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \nThe winner of ESA’s ‘Graffiti without Gravity’ street art competition has left a permanent mark on the Agency’s technical heart, with this mural on the wall next to ESA’s Compact Antenna Test Range.\n<\/p>\n \nIrish street artist Shane Sutton<\/a> won the Graffiti without Gravity<\/a> competition in May. Jointly organised by ESA and the Hague Street Art, 10 top street artists from across Europe competed live to create artworks across 2×2 m canvases.\n<\/p>\n \nThen, as a result, ESA’s antenna testing team invited Shane to decorate the entrance to their Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR)<\/a>, used to test satellite antennas in space-like conditions.\n<\/p>\n \n“This gave me more than six times bigger than the competition canvas to work with,” says Shane. “And the wall incorporates a corner, so I included related images on each side. It’s fun to paint such a large work – for me it’s all about giving things a go.”\n<\/p>\n \nIt took Shane two and a half days to finish. The mural shows an astronaut in contact with ESA’s Rosetta mission like someone holding a puppet on string, representing the use of antennas – essential to link space missions with their homeworld. Its background shows the ‘anechoic’ foam spikes that line the walls of the CATR, serving to absorb radio signals and reproduce the boundless void of space.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n