Our Place in Space: Belfast artist Oliver Jeffers launches latest creative project
As a child growing up in Belfast, Oliver Jeffers was fascinated with the solar system and the night sky. Amanda Ferguson caught up with the internationally renowned artist
Oliver Jeffers has enough good people around him to let him know if his latest wild idea can be realised in the real world.
Boundless energy and countless hours of work have been put in by the team bringing the eye-catching and thought-provoking Our Place in Space to fruition.
The 10K walking trail, launching from Bay Road Park in Derry today, is a scale model of the solar system using large modern art sculptures to house each planet.
It aims to encourage people to think about their place in the universe through the trail, plus cultural events and workshops.
“It is a way of looking at ourselves and how we operate with each other over the only bits of dry land that are habitable to human life in the known universe,” Jeffers said.
Oliver Jeffers with astrophysicist Professor Stephen Smartt. Credit: Lorcan Doherty
The night sky and the solar system has fascinated him since he was a boy growing up in north Belfast.
“At a large scale it is our local map. My first book was How to Catch a Star. That sense of the unknown and just vast distances as a way to flip the perspective of looking at anything has always been very interesting to me.”
The collaborative and challenging nature of Our Place in Space appealed to Jeffers.
He designed the concept, and has been working with the Nerve Centre in Derry, Professor Stephen Smartt from the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and others, on it.
Jeffers tells the Belfast Telegraph he makes a habit of operating with zero margin for error for extended periods of time and biting off just about as much as he can chew and no more, but “it’s all going well”.
“It has been very enjoyable and successful. The Nerve Centre has been absolutely incredible at figuring out how to do things I would never have had the capacity to figure out. And working with Stephen Smartt, who is not only a great astrophysicist but a great science communicator, has been magnificent as well.”
Shoot for the moon: Stephen Smartt and artist Oliver Jeffers. Credit: Lorcan Doherty
He added: “It has been so enjoyable. Such a great team. I suggest a wild idea or wild thing, and other people figure out how to make it happen and how to do it.
“And there is enough voices of reason in there to talk some sense into me if something is completely impractical, but it has been really great,” the artist adds.
“It is right across education, the sciences, the arts, and at it’s very core level it is an excuse to get out for a walk outdoors and see some large contemporary brightly coloured sculptures.”
The project is a flagship commission of UNBOXED; a UK-wide celebration of creativity involving 10 projects — five of which are coming to Northern Ireland over the coming months.
Our Place in Space runs until October 16 at three locations in Northern Ireland: Derry-Londonderry (until May 22), Divis and Black Mountain (July 30 to August 28) and the North Down Coastal route (September 17 to October 16). It is also going to Cambridge, England (July 30 to August 28).
And tomorrow, Oliver will be taking part in a Guinness World Record attempt in Derry to get as many humans dressed as astronauts in one place.
On what he thinks his place in the universe is Jeffers said: “I am a citizen, nay a patriot, of planet Earth.
“I have always liked the Samuel Johnson quote ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’.
“I don’t like identifying by nations, because nationalism, the international sense of the word, the boundaries for that are hard and sharp, and uninviting, whereas cultures on the other hand are more celebratory, and more about the soft edges, and that we all need to come from somewhere.
“Those stories of where we are from rather than the hard edges of being defined by arbitrary lines drawn across bits of land.”
Oliver with his debut children’s book How to Catch a Star. Credit: John Murphy Aurora PA
Jeffers is hoping Our Place in Space makes people take a second look at their own priorities, how they conduct themselves and what they think is actually important.
“Especially with elections coming up,” he said. “Whenever we tend to ask people what they want they tend to answer what they don’t want.
“When you break it down and get really under the skin of someone and start figuring out the raw basic needs of any person, all people, no matter where they are from and their background, tend to want the same very simple things, which is dignity, community, and to matter. To be involved somehow.”
Keeping an eye on the politics of Northern Ireland interests the 44-year-old artist is an author and illustrator whose art is critically acclaimed and whose children’s pictures books have been translated into over fifty languages and sold all over the world.
He speaks of the “revenge identity politics” he says has been unfolding in Northern Ireland for so long.
“It’s been defensive and reactionary as opposed to looking to how people actually want to spend their lives.
“I have started to realise it has become a good analogy to illustrate to Americans when the exact same rift is starting to be built in the USA. And you also start to see it in the ‘climate’ debate as well where people would rather be right than be better.”
Jeffers, his wife, and their young children have been based in Belfast since just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown began because they wanted to be closer to family.
He has also had a base in Brooklyn for the last 15 years so they are back and forth to the US.
Jeffers says he was drawn to the vibrancy of New York as a young man, ending up in Brooklyn because all the artists were being forced out of Manhattan in the early 2000s.
“New York seems to be the cultural centre of the Western world. I spent some time there in my 20s and it just felt electric and alive, and I knew I wanted to be there so I spent some time figuring out how to be there and found a community of artists and dear friends and people I would consider family now.”
Growing up in north Belfast Jeffers said he was able to see issues from different perspectives simultaneously, something that has really helped inform his work.
His love of art was nurtured at home, and he believes art education is not what it could be.
“It took them years before they thought to turn STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) into STEAM. For me in the early days it was a way to get out of doing other things. It was social value being able to draw on school bags and books.”
Jeffers believes the continued undervaluing of the arts by decision makers is short sighted.
“We are still held up in a very old system. Everybody is a cog in a machine and must be taught the same basic skill sets whereas that is not really practical and not really relevant.
“Art doesn’t lead to a quantifiable income stream in a way that is predictable for an individual.
“Lots of people don’t really understand how art is made, or even question why, so it is probably easier for them not to think about it.”
He speaks passionately of the “grit and determination, steadfastness and humility among Belfast people” and that he observes “there are some of the most wonderful people on Earth based in Northern Ireland”.
“We have got a unique sense of humour, charm, wit, perspectives, and grit,” he said.
“Sometimes people see me in a bar or restaurant and would stop me to stay ‘isn’t it brilliant you have done so well even though you are from Northern Ireland’ and it should be the other way round.
“You should be expected to do well if you are from Belfast.
“We punch well above our weight for a city the population the size it is. I could name you a hundred other metropolis areas of that same size in the UK, within .the USA, within Europe that you have never heard of.
“There is something in the water here. I think we should lean into ourselves a bit more and realise that we have everything we need.
“We just need to move forward.”
For further information about Our Place in Space visit ourplaceinspace.earth
