FOR 10 days earlier this month it seemed there was no limit to the heights Vicki Sullivan’s art would reach.
Tucked safely in a time capsule aboard a lander being carried upwards by a Vulcan rocket, the digitised artworks seemed destined to be among the first to land on the Moon.
However, although Sullivan’s works made it into space, they also made it back to a fiery end on re-entering Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
Technical problems saw the Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission 1 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with the Artists on the Moon or Annex 9, exhibition fail to make its planned Moon landing (Art destined to be out of this world, The News 9/1/24).
“Peregrine Mission One has concluded. We look to the future and our next mission to the Moon, Griffin Mission One,” the project’s organisers Canadian physicist, entrepreneur, and storyteller Dr Samuel Peralta and art publisher Didi Menendez, posted online on 20 January.
Sullivan is just as optimistic, saying she was among the first women with their art in space and the first Australians, “so that’s pretty cool”.
Rather than burning up, she felt it would have been “more romantic to drift around in space”.
“There are more launches planned and I have quite a few more pieces in those.”
First published in the Mornington News – 30 January 2024
