Announcement   Throughout history inventors, showmen,and an untold number of eccentrics and charlatans have built mechanical contraptions who’s primary purpose was to deceive or entertain (as oppose to carry out work). The relationship between the perceived magic and the real mechanical ingenuity that animates these devices fascinates me. It is this dichotomy that first triggered my interest in automata.

I make figurative mechanical sculptures that draw upon the history of automata, combining carved wood, old tins and found objects, with mechanisms engineered in brass and steel. This combination gives me great scope for improvisation and playfulness
My work typically depicts strange scenes and eccentric characters which mechanically re-enact fragments of dream-like narratives. I draw upon folk tales and myth, merging the everyday with humour and menacing elements of absurdity.

Increasingly I have benen building electronic sound and lighting into my work in order to enhance its cinematic and theatrical qualities.

I have been making automata professionally for the past four years, and my work is included in both national and international collections. I often accept commissions and some of my work forms part of the main prop for Gusieppe Tornetore’s (academy award winning director of Cinema Paredisso) upcoming film, The Best Offer. In 2010 Lawrence Lewelyn Bowen’s series House Gift featured one of my automata.