The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial, SAATCHI GALLERY 5 June - 8 September 2026

My 2017 series Lunar Voyage has been generously included in Saatchi’s richly packed and eclectic exhibition “The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial” The positivism of a world finally coming together around the Paris Agreement was key to this narrative’s gestation when limitations were set to a 2C increase in temperature compared to pre-industrial levels. I felt I needed to show that only by leaving Earth and looking back at our isolated blue planet do we realise we are very much alone when it comes to the survival of an ecosystem that can sustain us along with all living things. Every astronaut who has ever travelled on the Apollo missions, Skylab, the Mir and Tiangong space stations, comes back to Earth with a profound sense of wonderment conjured by the miracle of our existence.

Other influences were Homer’s Odyssey, (Odysseus in Greek meaning man of sorrow) memories watching the Apollo landings with my father and the countercultural visions of the Back- to-the-Earth-Movement in how to live sustainably as an alternative to so much expenditure on the Space Race. These arguments still resonate today as so many leaders focus on hubristic off-world solutions to our on-world challenges.

Finally Lunar Voyage is a metaphorical parable and polemic on family and an elliptical story questioning the largely patriarchal urge to explore and the artist’s desire to be alone. Only when the artist-traveller understands his loss, he realises it is too late to return home - TH