Mothership

2013. video (color, sound), media player, screen or projector, 15 min loop. Edition of 3, 1AP. Music by Evan Samek.
Conflating references from art history, video games, and popular culture, Mothership is a journey through fantastical, corporate-branded landscapes. Both playful and ominous, Mothership satirizes systems of power, wealth, and technology, inviting viewers into a seductive yet hollow simulation where meaning’s don’t quite materialize.
video installation in gallery showing still from Monaghan's video installation showing marvel's iron man dancing against a blue night sky.

installation view from The Real Thing, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung City, Taiwan, 2015

Humorous scene with pop-culture reference showing Iron Man dancing Contemporary art video installation showing pop culture references. Dream-like still showing the financial center of London on the back of a mythical cow Still showing a luxury high-end operating room Pop-culture references abound in this surreal video installation by artist Jonathan Monaghan Collector's case of Mothership showing key hash derived from bitcoin blockchain transaction making this work an important prototype for modern NFTs
Relationship to Blockchain
A limited of edition of 3, 1AP, Mothership was the first artwork registered and authenticated through the experimental Keidom SPOOL (Secure, Public, Online Ownership Ledger), later called ascribe, in Fall 2013, making it one of the first artworks to use a blockchain as a decentralized ledger; a prototype for modern NFTs. Because of this, the third edition was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2024, celebrating 10 years of blockchain related digital art.