In dialogue with Sarah Fortais

One of the important aspects of Cosmic Debris is how it engages the Newham community, casting the hands of various local groups, which will be suspended as an interrogation of the waste caused by humanity’s cosmic ambitions. Could you share with us some anecdotes from these casting workshops?  

I was really impressed by the students at Mayflower Primary School who were very conscientious. They all helped to clean up the mess at the end which I thought was endearing, especially since the artwork is about cleaning up space. Maybe we can harness that enthusiasm to come up with future solutions to space debris. 

They were also enthusiastic. There was one student in the class that seemed to know every fact about space and space debris (maybe more than me!) and another who couldn’t keep still.  As a result, his hand casting seemed to vibrate; because he moved his hand frequently inside the alginate it created a different aesthetic to a traditional casting, that looks even more like space debris.  

It seems like the process becomes a profound opportunity for learning… 

Absolutely. We involved a group called REIN (Rights and Equalities in Newham) and we got to meet several different groups that came in throughout the day. There were a couple of parents and children that were equally excited to hand cast together, and a few of the kids were so keen that they decided to become my assistants for the day to help the new attendees mix their alginate. So for me it was neat to see the learning about the materials turn directly into teaching others all in the same session, since again, that was one of the goals of the project.  

A lot of the kids said they had seen mould-making/casting videos on Youtube, and with this project they finally had the opportunity to work with these materials. A lot of sculpture making materials can be quite expensive and if you are learning how to cast for the first time there can be anxiety about wasting the materials or getting stuck in the mould, so it's always enjoyable for me to take those barriers away by teaching the process step-by-step and providing all the required materials.  

MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/BIEg6BFE

A video interview with Sarah Fortais at her studio. 

How did the participants react to having their hands cast?  

I've cast thousands of hands as an artist and it is always exciting to see someone's reaction after they pull their hand out of the mould and look inside the mould at all the detail that they were able to capture. Most people have never made a casting of their hand, so the hand casting sessions we ran this year would be the first time they would get to see a lifelike impression of themselves from the outside. I think it's pretty profound to see yourself occupy physical space. It always makes me feel like I am part of a place, that I have the right to take up space, and that I am grounded and connected to my surrounding materials.  

When your hand is floating in the wet alginate you slowly get comfortable with the material and after about 2 minutes the alginate starts to 'hold your hand' as it starts to solidify and make the life casting impression. It's fun to witness people experience the sensation of this stage; it's like they have achieved a fluidity or familiarity with material, and, at this point that they start to relax, the alginate warms up (by reflecting their body heat), and the whole container becomes an extension of their hand. As a sculptor, this material fluidity is the most satisfying part of making... I think for me it's the point where I can trust the material to complete the sculpture that I began making and it makes me feel connected to something permanent.  

Were there any other unexpected benefits to the community that came from doing the casting?  

When we visited Asian Elders at Subco Trust, a few of our participants had stiff hands and so we offered to help apply the Vaseline onto their hands (which is the first step before casting your hand in the alginate). One of the men compared it to a spa treatment – he couldn’t normally moisturise his hands himself. It reminded me that the project is not just about space debris, but how the practice of making art can have unexpected benefits on wellbeing.  

At BADU (a local youth social impact organisation), a lot of the younger participants continued to play with and manipulate the excess alginate. Normally with hand casting projects this material would just be thrown away, but a couple of people asked me to bag it up for them to take home.  Participants intuitively found value in the waste materials, which was exactly what the Cosmic Debris project is about. As such, I have taken all the leftover alginate after the hand castings are demoulded and carved them into meteorites to be added to the installation. 

Talk to us about how these casting workshops activated the space at Marshgate. 

I think one of the more successful parts about the workshops, especially for the adults that participated, is how we collectively relaxed into the Marshgate space once it became clear that we had permission to make a mess with our materials. As soon as we started mixing and the tables started getting covered with water and alginate, everyone got a lot chattier and especially with Beyond Sight Loss, there was a lot of laughter and excitement! 

I think with a brand new building and with so many new technologies available for teaching, it can be easy to forget that learning has and always will be a messy pursuit. Although a lot can be learned through verbal instruction and physical demonstration, there is an extra dimension that only hands-on experimenting can bring to a workshop.  

One of my goals with Cosmic Debris was to take the problem of Space Debris, which is physically distant and somewhat abstract (since a lot of our data comes from limited observational data) and think about it using tangible materials like alginate and plaster. The Cosmic Debris hand castings don't just make a 'perfect' copy of a person's hand; these beautifully imperfect hand castings are shaped by each participant’s individual experience of trying a new skill for the first time. If we are ever going to find ways to clean up space debris, we will simultaneously need to create new techniques and understand the materiality of space debris. I think the experience of lifecasting helps to materialise abstract thinking, and aids in what a lot of artists call 'thinking through making' where material fluidity can lead to creative problem-solving. 

One of the other pieces you have been developing as part of Space Tangle is called Cosmic Flock, which asks us to consider the contributions animals have made towards humans’ discovery of space. Cosmic Flock sees you shepherd a group of sculptural sheep in space suits through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a performative act. Could you tell us more about your process in creating the sheep?  

With regards to the Cosmic Flock, I began first by collecting sheep skulls while wandering in fields in Wales (actually quite close to where we completed the astronaut training for the Lunga 6 mission). Since most of the skulls I was able to collect were Shropshire sheep, I did some research about the size and body type of this particular breed. With that information I was able to build armatures out of scrap wood, newspaper, old clothes hangers – basically anything I could pull out of skips or find roadside while commuting to the Marshgate building. There's even a pile of old letterpress letters (that I found in a skip in Camden) in one of the lambs in order to weight the rear end appropriately.  

Next, I had to bulk out the sheep with 'wool' and this was done with all the packaging materials that I had saved up from deliveries sent to my studio for the past 2 years. The spacesuits themselves are made from a range of recycled textiles and metal parts: the hiking boots that I wore on the Lunga 6 mission, as well as trousers and socks that I've worn out while working in the studio. Some of the grommets and reflective banding I purchased new for the project but 90% of the material and all of the zippers were recovered from clothing that I was able to pull out of bins, upcycle, thrift, or gather from farms.  

How does sheep anatomy factor into your design?  

At the moment, I am finishing up the helmets, which need to be reflective but also allow the sheep to see 320 degrees, which is a sheep's natural range of vision.  It's important to me that the sheep are completely covered by a spacesuit considering their natural range of motion and behaviours. For instance, the suits are expandable to take into account wool growth. Inspired by Rosi Braidoitti’s 'bioegalitarian ethics', the idea is to present sheep as beings with capacities, not just countryside scenery.  

Tell us a bit about how this links to Space Week in general and what got you interested in making work about space.  

The 2025 World Space Week theme is Living in Space and so I wanted to extend that thinking to what we would require to not just live, but to actually thrive in space. Beyond the technologies and infrastructure required to live in space, I think humans require animal encounters, and the ability to creatively express themselves, and with the three exhibitions of Space Tangle – Cosmic Flock, Cosmic Debris, and Lunga 6 – I’ve explored various combinations of these two ideas.  

Space Tangle is open daily until November 2.