Artist talk: The Human Spaceship – Upon the Moon

Helen Schell with her painting, What Lies Beyond Black?

Saturday 15 October 2022 5-7pm

To accompany her solo exhibition, ‘The Human Spaceship – Upon the Moon’, Helen Schell and specialist space architect, Monika Brandić Lipińska talk about space exploration.

A Slice of the Moon

Helen Schell will talk about the Moon’s history, NASA’s Artemis missions and her other Moon inspired projects. She started creating artworks inspired by the Moon in 2011, devising ‘Moon-shot: Woman on the Moon’, which predicted preparations by NASA and other international space agencies for the first woman, first person of colour, and next man to return to the Moon within five years. Schell’s detailed research has led to her being the most knowledgeable artist on this topic in the country. The research has been informed by a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in 2019 and the 2022 NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop, where she presented a talk.

Monika Brandić Lipińska

Space to Grow

Monika Brandić Lipińska talks about biology-based systems for creating habitable environments in space, including her research into bio-fabrication strategies for stabilising loose rock and gravel surfaces using mycelium, or fungal threads, to construct living spaces for the settlement of planets such as Mars. The research is run in a collaboration with the astrobiology lab at NASA Ames Research Centre. Brandić Lipińska is a PhD researcher at the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE) at Newcastle University. She is a co-founder of Bio-Futures for Transplanetary Habitats, a research platform that aims to explore and enable interdisciplinary research on biological systems for space habitats. Brandić Lipińska holds a Master in Architecture from Lund University in Sweden, and a Master in Space Studies from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.


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News 2022Paul Stone