Cabaret Mechanical Theatre

Cabaret Mechanical Theatre

[update] Here is a video by Gaz Cobain showing some of the works. Show open until 5th May 2007.

I’ve been a regular visitor to the Kinetica Museum in London since it’s opening. One of the things I always really liked were the automata donation boxes. For this reason I attended the Cabaret Mechnical Theatre workshop that gave an insight into the processes using cardboard prototyping (some photos).

Last night was the opening of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre’s first-ever major retrospective show, which includes over 80 automata and a number of previously unseen works from CMT’s illustrious The Ride of Life. Here are my photos.

I can safely say that this one of the most beautiful, playful and magical exhibitions I’ve been to for a long time. My photos don’t do it justice, you need to go and see them moving in real life. It has a real feeling of British crazy backyard inventor to it, mixed with detailed tiny models to large scale automata. It was surprised by many of the works, narratives that formed over time rather than simply looping playback. I can’t recommend this exhibition enough.

Artists include Ron Fuller, Arthur Ganson, Tim Hunkin, Will Jackson, Pierre Mayer, Keith Newstead, Paul Spooner and Carlos Zapata. Read about CMT and the history of how it was started.

From the site:
The Ride of Life, developed as a satire of British culture, was a large-scale project commissioned in the late 1980’s by the Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield. Designed and created by the top British automatists of the time, it was to become a huge automated theme park and ride covering a colossal 25,000 sq ft area of the shopping centre and was set to become a landmark in the history of automata. However what started as a wonderful dream in the booming 80’s had a very rude awakening with the recession of the 90’s and after 3 years of work, the project was suddenly axed. Stored in sheds and warehouses for the past twenty years, many of the sets were tragically destroyed through vandalism and theft. CMT have initiated the restoration of the surviving scenes with some of the artists originally involved, enabling segments of The Ride of Life and the only complete surviving scene to be shown publicly for the first time.

If you are interested in automata, why not attend a workshop, attend artist talks, buy instruction books or kits. I’d love to see a lot more of this kind of work coming back.

More from Kinetica Museum.
Photos of this exhibition.

Posted on April 6th 2007 under Kinetic, Kinetica Museum, Toys