Kinetica Artfair

Tom Wilkinson

Coming from a background in automata-making, Tom Wilkinson's Square Dance was his first kinetic-like sculpture. Here the mechanism takes centre stage. This, in 1999, was a very important stage for him as it was a beginning of the transition into a form of mechanical art that he found immensely liberating.

As Square Dance starts to move it falls immediately into a state of entropy and, as with the railway engine on its track, the predictability of its clearly predetermined course is somehow reassuring. A pair of glasses was chosen because they are both mundane and also highly comical, suspended in mid air as if worn by the Invisible Man.

Femme Fatale, is an earlier work and again falls between kinetic sculpture and automata. Wilkinson's love of film and film equipment, is distilled in this piece and is the first completed work of a series he calls 'cinetic' sculpture. With Femme Fatale both the film loop and spool have double roles, each carry the image as well as being part of the mechanism. Marlene Dietrich, in her cinematic roles as Destry and Mata Hari, are the inspiration. Her iconic lips scratched onto the 16mm film, mouth the words 'I love you'.