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 quite an ambitious group and 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.
The creation time was very short – just under a month (with only a couple of rest days).
I’ve discovered over the years that it’s useful to get the bike frame and main mechanism created early, as the moving parts often need to be running and tested a lot to find all the tweaks and changes that need making. The fabrics, skins, soft fittings always take longer than anticipated and usually end up getting squeezed and get added to in future additions!
This was the first time I had used a combination of steel and bamboo parts. Aesthetically a good decision but the joining parts definately need more testing which time didn’t allow this time around 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 had 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!