George Bolster: From art in West Cork to aliens in outer space 

Cork-born artist George Bolster's association with the SETI Institute in California feeds into his current exhibition at Uillinn 

Bolster’s fascination with the search for extra-terrestrial life is behind much of the work in Communication: We Are Not The Only Ones Talking… , his solo exhibition at Uillinn, the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen.

George Bolster does not doubt the existence of extra-terrestrial beings. The Cork-born artist has lived in America for many years, enjoying a long association with the SETI Institute at Mountain View, California, where more than 100 scientists are engaged in the search for other life forms in the universe.

“Given how many stars there are in our galaxy alone, it would be hard to believe that there cannot be some kind of life out there,” he says. “SETI searches for signals outside the bandwidth of nature. They’re looking outside the usual frequencies for an artificially made sound or signal. They don’t believe aliens have visited here or anything like that, but they do think there is every possibility that some form of life, even at the level of microbes, will be discovered on some other planet in our lifetime.”