Print commissioned by Nasa uncovered for Bradford exhibition
A print by a Yorkshire artist commissioned by Nasa in the early days of space travel will go on show as part of a pop art exhibition.
Komtek I by Michael Fossick, who studied at Bradford School of Art, was created in 1962 to celebrate a Hong Kong company that produced microcomputers in the early days of space travel.
The print was part of a Nasa project to document the effort of sending the first humans to the moon and is on display as part of the Pop Art at Cartwright Hall exhibition.
The display tells the story of the British International Print Biennale, which took place at the Bradford gallery on 11 occasions between 1968 and 1990, and runs until March 2027.
While the exhibition also includes work by Andy Warhol and David Hockney, there is “definitely stuff that people won’t have seen before”, said curator Jill Iredale.
“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,” said Iredale.
“It was actually a screen print, but it was made from a very early computerised image,” she said.
In March 1962, Nasa administrator James Webb awarded commissions to 38 artists, including Fossick, to document the space agency’s achievements.
John H. Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth on 20 February 1962 and in the following decade Nasa’s Mercury programme led to the Apollo missions, and eventually to Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon in 1969.
Fossick chose to honour Komtek I, a microcomputer produced by Komtek Technologies Ltd in Hong Kong that was significant in the early years of the space programme.
He submitted the print to the First British International Print Biennale held at Cartwright Hall in 1968 where it won a prize.
