This was a commission from Emergency Exit Arts to work with Colours of Redbridge, Ilford. What an amazing project to be invited to be a part of.
The co-commissioning by the community members was a lovely process. The group were clear that they wanted a cycle-powered, kinetic sculpture, celebrating small things in nature and inspired by ideas around rebalance. They had visions of a colourful abstract contraption; friendly, joyful and with lots of moving parts.
The commission was for the Big Small Wonders street parade. The parade itself featured many community members carrying items they had designed and made. It brought together designers from across the UK and abroad and included work from Kinetika and an artist from STOMP!
Having gathered all the design ideas together, I began to sketch ideas and created a maquette which I presented to the group before I began the build.
Due to other work commitments the creation time was very short – just under a month (with only a couple of rest days).
It’s always best I’ve discovered over the years to get the bike frame and main mechanism created early as they often need to be running a lot to find all the tweaks and changes. The other things like dressing always take longer than you think!
This was the first time I had used a combination of steel and bamboo parts. Aesthetically a good decision but the joining parts needed more testing which time didn’t allow unfortunately.
As the days went by I added more moving parts; legs, wings, tail and I would have liked to have more time to test and improve these but the date of the parade couldn’t be changed!
I had help with sewing the silk parts from artists Katherine and Ellie at Ashbank Arts (where I have my workshop). The silk was hand painted by Kinetica who were also working on a different aspect of the parade project. The combination of Taravanya and Kinetica’s giant fans was fabulous.
Have a look at the film below to see Taravanya being cycled around!