Cash for Honours on Southwold Pier

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…

Sharmanka Travelling Circus

If you are coming to London for the CMT exhibition at Kinetica, make sure to visit the Museum of Croydon to see Eduard Bersudsy’s fantastic travelling circus.
Beautiful while still, once an hour this magical menagerie of recycled metal will spring to life to perform an incredible choreography to haunting music and synchronised light, weaving funny and tragic stories about human life.

CMT Talks at Kinetica

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 Tim’s Chiropodist (1986), originally made for CMT in Covent Garden, will be treating visitors’ feet throughout the exhibition, which runs until 5th May 2007.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.

The Power of Love

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’.

‘CMT and The Ride of Life’ London Exhibition

April 6th to May 5th 2007 – Kinetica, Old Spitalfields Market, London E1 6AA
This fascinating new exhibition will trace the story of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre from its birth in 1979 as ‘Cabaret’ – a crafts shop in Falmouth, Cornwall. Featuring over 80 pieces of automata from the past 28 years, as well as some new commissions.

The upper floor of Kinetica will be devoted to The Ride of Life, a major CMT project from 1989. Although most of the 25 life size automated scenes were completed by the artists, the Ride was never installed at its intended destination – Meadowhall Shopping Centre, in Sheffield.

This exhibition tells the story of the Ride, and will display the one remaining complete scene, – Ron Fuller’s Adam and Eve Pubic Bar, alongside parts from other scenes including Tim Hunkin’s ‘Living Room’ – where the Ride was to have started off with visitors seated on their travelling sofas, and Paul Spooner’s ‘Main Street UK’.
Talks and Screenings to be announced.