With a background in science and engineering, Alex Kirkpatrick draws inspiration from a love of human curiosity and ingenuity. For all life’s common origin on Earth, there are a few traits that define humankind; tool use, complex language, and the preservation of knowledge. Together they laid the early foundation upon which countless generations have continued to build. This feeling of awe at our species’ history was beautifully described by the Canadian astronomer, Rebecca Elson in her poem “Antidotes to Fear of Death”, which ends:
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
Achievements like the moon landings, computers, and the intricate map of particle physics are deeply rooted in a rich loam produced over millennia by inquisitive minds. It is this connection between our technological first steps and the modern world which inspired The Voyagers sculpture. Named after a small, nuclear powered, spacecraft sent on a journey that first left our planet, and then solar system behind, carrying a message of who built it, and where it was from.
Alex’s current work pays thoughtful tribute to the role science plays in human history, its monumental achievements webbed by the intricate, and interlinked branches of knowledge that span our technological world. His past work, unveiling the complex mathematical beauty within seashells, has been shown at the Curwen and Moncreiff-Bray galleries, Hampstead AAF, Battersea AAF, and a few pieces are currently held by the Lighthouse Gallery, Penzance.