A rare Nasa print by Yorkshire-born artist Michael Fossick has been uncovered and placed on display in a pop art exhibition at Cartwright Hall in Bradford, running until March 2027.
Early Space Programme Commissions
Nasa administrator James Webb awarded commissions to 38 artists in March 1962 to document the achievements of the US space agency. Fossick, who studied at the Bradford School of Art, created his print titled Komtek I that same year to celebrate a Hong Kong company producing microcomputers during the early days of space travel.
The artwork was part of a broader Nasa project to document the effort of sending the first humans to the moon. John H. Glenn had become the first American to orbit the earth on 20 February 1962, setting off a decade of Mercury and Apollo missions that ultimately led to Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969, according to the BBC.
Fossick chose to highlight Komtek Technologies Ltd, a Hong Kong firm whose Komtek I microcomputer helped develop the early space programme. He subsequently submitted the screen print—crafted from an early computerised image—to the First British International Print Biennale at Cartwright Hall in 1968, where it won a prize.
Cartwright Hall Pop Art Exhibition
The current exhibition at Cartwright Hall tells the story of the British International Print Biennale, an event held at the Bradford gallery on 11 occasions between 1968 and 1990. At its height, the biennial featured more than 500 works selected from over 3,000 entries by local printmakers and artists, according to Yahoo.
The gallery’s display includes pieces by Andy Warhol, Roy Licthenstein, and David Hockney. Hockney served as a judge for the first biennial in 1968 and designed the poster for the show, which is also included in the gallery’s current display.
definitely stuff that people won’t have seen before
Jill Iredale, curator
Curator Jill Iredale noted the unusual origin of the display’s centerpiece. It’s a completely bizarre sort of connection somehow that an artist born in Sheffield that went to Bradford School of Art was somehow commissioned by Nasa,
Iredale said, adding that the piece was made from a very early computerised image.
Iredale also attributed the local pop art explosion to a post-war reaction against the seriousness of World War II, paired with a booming commercial print culture. Bradford maintained an experimental, DIY aesthetic across its colleges, supported by a post-baby boom surge of young people and growing opportunities for working-class youth.