The Mechanical Blog

In celebration of Paul Spooner’s 60th Birthday this month we are preparing for a new virtual exhibition of his work which will be online from 20th November 2008.  We will also be publishing a celebratory book to coincide with the exhibition.
Paul’s recently completed the piece above, which was commissioned by the Falmouth Art Gallery
for their forthcoming exhibition celebrating the work of artist Henry Scott Tuke.
The title reads ‘Please Mr Tuke, when can we put our togs back on’ and the thermometer reads from ‘Nippy’ to ‘Perishing’.

A new work by the Colombian automata maker Carlos Zapata is currently being exhibited at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in London.

In the piece a man protecting a small child is being beaten by soldiers. Carlos has always been concerned about the ill treatment of innocent people, and the fact that very often nothing is done to stop it - even though it is known to be taking place.
Whilst turning the handle of this piece the audience realises that the he or she is actually taking part in the torture.

The exhibition continues until 19th August 2007.

Paul Spooner’s latest piece, ‘I Remember Gundestrup’ is currently on show at our exhibition at Kinetica. The two figures slowly move around in the vessel of blood-red Janus heads.
For those who can’t visit, the caption reads:-

‘This is not as bad as it looks: customs change in Denmark as they do all over most of the world. Long ago when customs were unlike those of today (in most places) a young prince of Denmark had had a bloody but ultimately successful battle. Luckily, he possessed a wondrous cauldron that had the magical property of reviving any corpse that was simmered in it. That sort of thing happened in those days. The woman is someone he won in the battle.’

Heads will roll.

Ron Fuller is currently restoring the Adam and Eve pubic bar, the only remaining complete scene from the Ride of Life. The bar will be operational at our exhibition at Kinetica from 6th April to 5th May.

To give you a flavour of the completed scene, here are some of Ron’s words from 1989.

 
Welcome to the pubic bar of the Adam & Eve English Pub

Your average ‘Soup in the Basket’, gas ‘ever-burn fake log fie’, road house. Smells of stale cider, cigar buffs, & unemptied spittoons. The landlord (Adam) & the landlady (Eve) are in their ‘birthday’ suits - the landlord pulls pints (0.5lt) of Black Shaft English lager and wipes the drips off the counter. The landlady smokes, drinks, waves, & winks. The ‘Viking’ motor bike fruit machine man is the snake in the grass - the beast that bites. To be decent Eve’s breasts are hidden by the cider pumps, but to tell you they are still there they pulse with light. the whole scene pulses, throbs, goes up and down. in and out -
FERTILITY + CREATION. We can’t wait….

On a visit to Southwold Pier last month with Tim Hunkin and his wife Meg (pictured) I was very privileged to pay an English Guinea (or £1.10) and get my own honour from Tim’s new machine ‘Decoration Direct’.

I also had a very satisfying £1 worth of fun with Tim’s Art Apocalypse - smashing the sculpture at the end very convincingly I thought - one could get addicted to such things…

Tim Hunkin’s talk ‘Popular Art’ (11th April 6pm) will be the first in a series of talks at Kinetica to coincide with the CMT retrospective and Ride of Life exhibition which starts on Friday 6th April. Tim’s Chiropodist (1986), originally made for CMT in Covent Garden, will be treating visitors’ feet throughout the exhibition, which runs until 5th May 2007.

Other talks include Will Jackson, Paul Spooner, as well as an evening with Sue Jackson and Sarah Alexander looking back over the past 28 years of CMT.

We are thrilled to offer this new piece from Japanese automata maker, Kazu Harada, just in time for Valentines.
After studying Art History at university, Kazu worked mainly as a computer operator. He started making automata as a hobby in 2002 and came to England last September, as he says, ‘to meet great automata makers and develop my automata making skills’.

Kazu has been apprenticing with The Fourteen Balls Toy Company during his time as a student at Falmouth University.

As Kazu says,
‘My main intent is to make people chuckle with my automata
which are cute at a glance but somewhat weird’.

Paul Spooner has just finished a great new piece called ‘The Life of Marat’, in which we find Marat sitting in his bath (fashioned from a piece of lead donated by a neighbour), turning the pages of ‘The People’s Friend’ - the cover of which has a rather gruesome picture of Charlotte Corday. On careful inspection the viewer will see that Spooner has also made the mirror image of Marat, his newspaper and the duck upside down in the bath.

Spooner’s inscription on the piece is as follows:-

‘ ‘Jean Paul Marat’ - Born in Switzerland, but thrown out for being spotty, is seen here taking a bath in Revolutionary France, he is reading an English version of his newspaper, “L’Ami du Peuple”.

Simon Schama has got wind of this and is putting on his own programme about the original painting of Marat in his bath by David in this week’s BBC2 programme, ‘The Power of Art’. (Friday 10th November - 7.30pm)

Matt Smith has produced a brilliant series of automata exhibits for the newly opened Weston Park Museum in Sheffield. The pieces are part of the new ‘Life and Times‘ gallery and depict many of the past occupations in the local area. This is the clogger (a latter day shoemaker).

Matt’s long awaited new Fourteen Balls Design will be announced later this year as part of our ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ Virtual Exhibition.

Book a place, (a snip at £5) at Paul Spooner’s forthcoming talk at Trelowarren, Cornwall.

You will be thoroughly entertained as Paul discusses his pieces in the current ‘Smile’ exhibition, as well as an almost complete history of everything else he has ever made.. including the lovely ‘Das Fischermadchen’ (2005) pictured.

The Fisher Girl’s skirt is filled with 27 tiny painted fish, which gently undulate as the handle is turned.

Note: If you are planning to go there pay careful attention to the map before you set off, my visit last week was considerably delayed by visiting the village of Gweek three times.