Caragh Thuring

And it's all invisible in a way.

And these satellites, I can't remember what started, but I think I was reading something in the paper.

And I was reading about the fact that he's been providing military support for 25 years.

And that's why we need this horrible man, because he's, you know, the MOD and the America, everybody's relying on him in the world, really, with these satellites.

And also that they'd asked him to change the lighting on the satellites because they were making scientific experiments.

exploration or experimentation or whatever research difficult because the glow of these lights was overbearing so he had to tone those down so all these different things that i was just thinking this is horrific and then we're sort of cocooned by this without really realizing you know we look at the sky we see all these lovely stars and the odd satellite you see sort of

going overhead and so I wondered if there was any way to look at how many there were so I googled it and found this website that wasn't official that showed them in constant motion live shifting around the planet and you could look at any part of of the world or any country and reorientate yourself on this map and see them just sort of slowly shifting so I just took a few screen grabs and decided to paint it and I thought of it like a

sort of an eyeball in a way or or a moon or a star constellation or or a planet or you know it looks like all of these things and there's sharp lines at the bottom on the top where the poles are where they obviously don't need so many and it is horrific and of course it's not every dot that was on the on the actual screen grab I just made my own version of it in a way and I also was thinking about Via Selman's paintings and the sort of infinite spaces in her work and and how sort of epic they are and so delicate at the same time

And there's almost like a dandelion that you could blow off, you know, and of course, they are uncontrollable as well.

They spread everywhere.

And also the idea of something that's so epic on a small scale.

You know, there's another painting with and often I paint, you know, rivets or nuts and bolts or totally banal industrial items that have been carefully engineered and thought about.

And I make big paintings with those, you know.

I wanted to paint all the American bombers that were currently bombing Iran.

I can't remember all the names, but there's the stealth bomber, which is the most current, you know, the newest, a B-52 and something else.

One looks a bit like a squid.

The other one looks like a generic plane bomber.

And the other one, a bit like a manta ray.

So that even in itself is interesting.

And they're such beautifully crafted objects, really.