Arts: Vostok 5

I have for the last two months been drawing tiny miniature pictures of the dogs the Soviet Union sent into space in the ’50s and ’60s. The pictures will form part of a group show called Vostok 5 that deals with people and animals in space. We are all either musicians pretending to be artists or vice versa. As well as producing an exhibition we have also made a nine-track album.

I’ve been interested in space flight for some time and my own record company is named after one of the Russian space dogs. I thought it would be funny or cute to make art about these animals in orbit. A colourful boys’ own adventure, hounds in space suits, spinning though the cosmos.

Space travel always brings out the child in me and I chose to use the art medium of my youth: pens, coloured pencils and tiny jotter pads. I wanted to be the twelve-year-old me, drawing Judge Dredd and space shuttles on my parents’ floor.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Like most people I know that Laika perished whilst becoming the first earth-born creature in space, and I also knew that other dogs didn’t make it. My picture research made the truth rawer and harder to ignore. This wasn’t a science fiction Pixar movie. This was about gas masks, straps, wires and electrodes. This was about drugs, centrifuges, shoebox-sized kennels and feeding tubes cut into stomachs. Somewhere between 14 and 40 I had become a vegetarian, worked for Battersea Dogs Home and adopted a goat. Space didn’t seem so much fun anymore.

It’s easy to see why the Soviet rocket scientists chose dogs. You can see it in their eyes in the photos. Trussed up tightly in their pressure suits, their eyes show only trust and loyalty. I was particularly drawn to the story of Smelaya. She managed to escape the compound and miss her flight only to return for food and make another mission. Dogs are domesticated animals — they rarely bite the hand that feeds, and that’s why they get abused.

Russia has a strong connection to those early days of spaceflight. There are statues of Laika, Belka and Strelka in Star City. The dogs have become heroes, but is it possible to be a hero when you can’t exercise free will?

I understand, though don’t necessarily agree, with the benefits of animal experimentation, but these dogs didn’t help advance science or medicine. They just got inside the rockets the men were too scared to.

For the Vostok 5 exhibition I’ve tried to create pictures that are half wonder, half horror, pretty images that make the viewer do a double take. They are drawings for people who love rockets and animals.

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Vostok 5 is an exhibition about people and animals in space. It runs September 1-7 at The Outside World Gallery, 44 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London, E2 7DP. It features art and music by Duncan Barrett (Tigercats), Darren Hayman (Hefner), Sarah Lippett (Fever Dream), Paul Rains (Allo Darlin’/Hexicon) and Robert Rotifer (Rotifer). You can hear a track Darren recorded for the project, ‘Little Arrow, Little Squirrel’, here.

The nine-track CD will be available from www.hefnet.com

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