Space Puppet Relay Team
Opening: October 29, 2015
Space Puppet Relay Team is an ongoing collaboration between Nick Bontrager and Emily Link. Using sculpture styles distinct to each artist, they have created puppet-like “travelers” and the vessels they use to explore. Bontrager and Link live in separate cities, and communicate about their individual missions and creation of the figures and their accoutrements electronically. Vessels have been constructed for the travelers that use modern-day space flight vehicles as a reference. These vessels “land” at historically significant and alien locations in the artist’s residential cities and surrounding locations. Unboxed, the travelers are documented interacting with the public and their environment, collecting samples and conducting experiments. The Space Puppet Relay Team project focuses on the ongoing necessity for exploration and adventure, on both the grandest and smallest scale, and the uncertainty and excitement of space travel as the footage from the journey, whether success or failure, will only be viewable once the vessel has arrived at its destination at Matchbox Gallery. The artists will have “Mission Patches” available for sale during the opening.
