Autómatas – Teatro Mecánico

The 2nd of our series of automata exhibitions at El Parque de las Ciencias in Granada was opened on Friday evening by their president Mar Mareno, she is seen here with the museum director Ernesto Paramo.
“Autómatas. Teatro mecánico” This year’s exhibition includes a new presentation of 8 works by Carlos Zapata – entitled, ‘Theatre of Colombian Dreams’. This is the first time that Carlos has exhibited in Spain, and he was greeted with fantastic enthusiasm by the Spanish audience. Artist Ron Fuller also attended the opening and enjoyed showing his Armchair Aviator, which dates back to the Ride of Life over 20 years ago. Visitors were thrilled with Patrick Bond’s new Flying Saucer as it elevated and crash landed throughout the evening. Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre brought their Noah’s Ark, with beautiful lights and music, it really set the scene. Stephen Guy and his team from Rose Bruford College gave a performance of their street theatre work, The London Jungle Book. They are now working with Spanish professionals on workshops for children and adults throughout the exhibition, which continues to 31st January 2010.

La Opinion de Granada Article

Teleprensa Article

News Video

Simon Tait’s Mews No.5

Jungle drums, cogs and sprockets

There�??s a lovely little volume called the London Jungle Book by a Gond artist called Bhajju Shyam, all about his trip to London (to decorate an Islington Indian restaurant). The Gonds are native jungle artists from central India who have a particular take on the world, whereby everything is seen in terms of their jungle domus �?? their dogs always know where they�??re going, as do London buses which are seen as large red dogs, for instance. Londoners are pretty miserable during the day, but very jolly in the evening in pubs, when �?? in Islington at any rate �?? they tend to wear black. Rather like bats, thought Bhajju.

Well all this appealed to a certain Dr Stephen Guy, a historian turned devotee of mechanical automata. He is also a tutor and decided Bhajju�??s publication would be a rather good project for his students. They could bring it to life by creating machines around the images of bats, dogs, buses etc. So they did, and created a remarkable show that was performed at the Horniman Museum in June, and gets a new lease of life when it appears in the CMT exhibition in Granada in November.

Now, you�??d be excused if you guessed that Dr Guy was teaching at an engineering college or even an art school, but he isn�??t. His seat of learning is the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance (let me call it the Rose for short), as it�??s known as of this term. His students are into Scenic Arts and he tells me that the Rose has has had a growing interest in mechanical theatre, so that a couple of years ago they appointed him to teach it.

Steve Guy�??s own provenance is interesting, incidentally. Twenty years ago he was a history PhD student at Queen Mary, University of London, making ends meet by working part-time in Covent Garden at, you guessed, CMT. Almost needless to say the history was forgotten and mechanical theatre took over.

He joined the Rose in Sidcup in 2006 and the first major project was to create a mechanical version of Aristophanes�?? classical classic The Birds. The students had to find out how to make machines that mimicked the actions of birds. They learned about the usually non-theatrical pursuits of drilling, grinding, welding and riveting, used plumbers�?? pipes and scooter parts, scrounged cooking oil from a local Chinese restaurant, and in short showed a deal of ingenuity. They had a parade of their creations through Sidcup, when several of their creations had to be carried back to the drawing board in dismembered parts. But they persevered under Dr G�??s genial guidance, and got it so right that they were able to take their birds and created a performance for the international showcase the Prague Quadrennial, and were a hit. �??Wonderful set of students, wonderful;�?? says Steve.

It was a new set of students, just as wonderful it turned out, that put together the London Jungle Book �?? to the delight of Bhajju Shyam to whose home village in Uttar Pradesh Dr G introduced the mechanical theatre of the book, and did workshops with kids there as well as performances.

�??The point is that �??mechanical theatre�?? is being recognised as a legitimate part of puppet theatre, (that was the section of the Prague Quadrennial that we were part of), and there�??s enormous enthusiasm for it among the students and audiences�?? he says.

Term has started again, and a new project is under way. Next June the Horniman Museum has an exhibition called Myths and Monsters. I think we can safely leave the rest to their imagination.

Mewsette

Look out for Paul O�??Grady on his TV show at 5pm on October 19. He will have taken on a rather alarming aspect until you realise that it�??s not actually him chairing the frolics, nor even his alter ego Lily Savage. The show will open with RoboThespian in his place �?? created by Will Jackson�??s Engineered Arts which I told you about back in June. Mechanical theatre is to be he theme of the programme.

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And keep a watchful eye on this website from November 12. Each evening for 40 nights something will be happening. Precisely what is a closely guarded secret, which means I�??ve no idea,  but each night there will be some new manifestation of the Magic of Cabaret, the series title. The spell lasts until Winter Solstice, December 21; don�??t miss it.

CMT in Dortmund

There was great excitement in Dortmund, Germany with the opening of our touring exhibition at DASA yesterday.

Hundreds of people arrived around 11 a.m., and were treated to the sounds of steel drums before entering through the Drifting Apart sliding doors into the exhibition hall. Walter Ruffler and Falk Keuten were guests of honour and curator Hans-Gerd Kaspers welcomed us all with a talk about the history of automata.

You can see some more pictures of the exhibition here. As well as a great article about the show here (English translation).

DASA is well worth a visit, and has very informative permanent exhibits on the theme of the workplace. You can take a ride which extols the dangers of operating a fork-lift truck, learn how an electricity power station works, and children can construct their own buildings and try out a pneumatic drill.

Simon Tait’s Mews No.4

Viva Carlos!

It happens. Struggling artist in a strange country just about making ends meet working in a warehouse by day and painting by night pictures that he can occasionally sell, gets a creative block. Can�??t paint any more. Disaster. Body and soul threatening to fall apart. Loyal and loving wife goes to London, to Covent Garden, and discovers Cabaret. Comes running home to New Cross armed with a leaflet. �??This is what you should do, Carlos,�?? she tells the painter, and the rest is�?�

Well, a fairy story, isn�??t it? Doesn�??t really happen like that. Except that in the case of Carlos Zapata it is exactly what happened, and today his work is in private collections and galleries all over the world, and he even had a piece in the RA�??s Summer Exhibition a couple of years ago. And in November Cabaret is opening a show with some new, unexpected, work by the Colombian-born Carlos at El Parque de las Ciencias in Granada, Spain. All in ten short years.

It was in 1999 that he plucked up the courage to walk into the Cabaret shop with some of his drawings after his English rose wife Penny�??s discovery. Sue was out but he left his portfolio and the next day she contacted him, said she liked his ideas and suggested he work for her for the same money he was getting at the warehouse with time for his own work, and pick up a few tips. He spent a year sweeping up, dealing with customers, mending broken automata and working his own ideas. �??It was the best school I could have had, meeting people, artists, and learning the art�?? he says. Then when Cabaret decided to close when the rent went vertical, he was at a loss. �??I said to Sue that I didn�??t know what I was going to do. She said �??You�??re a professional now, you�??ll sell your work�?�. And I did.�??

Self-taught Carlos Zapata came to London to escape the civil war that has been raging in Colombia all his 46 years and more, but its the folk art of not only South America but of Africa and Asia that inspires him. His early piece, Transpacifico, is a delightfully comic bus, 18 inches high and laden with exotic fruits and comestibles on the roof and equally colourful passengers happily entertaining themselves inside. The passengers on the London bus he made at about the same time are altogether more sinister�?�

He also gets inspiration from old-fashioned museums like the Museum of Mankind that used to be behind the Royal Academy, the Pitt Rivers in Oxford and the Horniman in South London. �??I like the stories and the way they�??re told,�?? he says. He�??s had commissions from a number of museums, including the Natural History Museum this year.

Family is important to him, though he can only rarely get back to Colombia. The critic he pays most attention to is Thomas, his nine-year-old son, �??who tells me exactly what he thinks, whether a piece works or not, if it�??s funny�?�. Despite being a native Spanish speaker, having his work on exhibition in Spain will be just another adventure �?? the Unites States felt much more like home. When he exhibited in San Francisco he met his late grandfather�??s sister for the first time; in Baltimore he found a lost cousin. He doesn�??t know what to expect from Granada, where he will be showing much larger work than before, some of the pieces six feet tall, �??really big guys�??.

He�??s not afraid to tackle political issues, either, and one recent one is of a sweatshop. He�??s working on a large elephant now, with a comical array of Europeans safari-ing on its back, but in his mind is a much darker piece with a theme of African child soldiers.

�??Mostly the Granada pieces are not political, but an artist cannot ignore what is happening around him,�?? he says. Something of the revolutionary about this Zapata, and I don�??t mean turning handles.

For those who will be in or around Granada this winter, the exhibition opens at El Parque de las Ciencias from November 1 to January 31.

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Adam & Eve ride again! Yes, the surviving element of CMT�??s great Ride of Life extravaganza, Ron Fuller�??s Adam & Eve Public Bar, is to get a new lease at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. In January it goes on display for three months. A&E is the only complete tableau left of the 25 that were created in 1989 for the Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield but never installed. The project management of centre changed, most of the scenes were lost or destroyed and there were only this and elements of pieces by Tim Hunkin and Paul Spooner left when CMT finally extricated the remains.

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Interesting that the people behind the Fourth Plinth are the same as those that brought us the Sultan�??s Elephant in 2006 and last year La Machine, Liverpool�??s giant spider. They�??re called Artichoke. They admit that the Gormley business is a bit out of their territory, but it seems to me that it needn�??t be. Why is there no automaton scheduled for an hour in the spotlight? Come on, boys and girls, we�??re only just over half way through the 100 days of the project so there�??s plenty of time.

Mewsette 3

Sarah had what we coyly call a significant birthday last week �?? see Gary�??s gorgeous pic of the gorgeous creature – and, still seven at heart, she needed an entertainer to go with the jelly, cake and fizzy drinks (OK, small concession to adulthood, Prosecco) at her party. But who? No contest. Step forward Matthew Robins and Tim Spooner, fresh from their successes performing on top of the National Theatre�??s fly tower. They gave, of course, the piece Sarah herself had commissioned, Cabin Doors to Manual (�??an adult fairy tale�??), and it had the audience giggling and clapping their little hands. Good job there were no kids, they wouldn�??t have got it. You can watch it here Cabin Doors to Manual on Vimeo

First Edition �?? The Laird of The Mummy Wrappings

The Fourteen Ball Toy Company are producing this early Anubis piece from 1982, which Paul Spooner made while CMT was still in Cornwall. This is a rare opportunity to add a low numbered piece to your collection.

Our friend, the Egyptian God Anubis, is suitably attired in a beautifully painted tartan kilt.

The text reads,

‘Since his heyday in ancient Egypt, Anubis seldom has a chance to show off his shapely calves. He takes the opportunity in this Highland manifestation, but his pleasure is impaired by his young relatives’ lack of aptitude as a sheepdog.

145 mm x 118mm x 240 mm
Excluding handle – which makes 145mm into 200mm

Price: £465.00

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