Remember the names! James Caldicott and Samuel Apley, the founders of arts collective Circus Kinetica have big plans. I caught the inventive duo at their base beneath the Embassy Court edifice, where they craft their naturally powered automata and autostrumenta (self-playing instruments) from recycled materials.
How did you start working together?
James: We both came to Brighton to study in the same year, but didn’t know each other. Sam was at the Art College and I was up at the Architecture Department at Mithras House. After finishing uni, I used the foyer of Embassy Court as an Open House to exhibit some musical windmills that I’d made, with a soundtrack of the windmills recorded at different places in the building. It won first prize in the Brighton Fringe Visual Arts thing and I met Sam at the same time. Everyone had been telling me about this guy in town who’d been making water-powered instruments…
S: Yeah, big rain-powered instruments. I’d been commissioned after I finished my Wood, Metal, Ceramics and Plastics degree but was just working as a fabricator, doing welding and industrial stuff. I came to James’ Windjam private view and that was it. Quit my job and was like, ‘right, let’s start making things’.
J: Secret Garden Party festival were looking, so we made this piece with a piano. A large scorpion creature with a piano harp in it, a wind device to play it and loads of hammers for people to play it themselves. I think we did the whole thing in eight days, from drawing the thing to taking apart two pianos, using the big machines up at a forge near Stanmer Park, then coming down here to finish little bits and setting it up… What happened next?
S: Then Beachdown Festival…
J: Life water bottle company contacted us because someone who worked for them lived upstairs [Embassy Court]. They said, ‘We want to make a recycling point but turn it into a bit of a visual spectacular – have you got any ideas?’ We suggested this thing using old tent poles and bottles… went to V festival to go tatting for tent poles. Going to after-festivals, it’s like going to the end of the world.
S: As far as you can see, just derelict chaos. You find incredible things. Tents with crates of beer in them. Lights. Stereos.
J: The amount of barbecue packs – unbelievable. We had enough for every other festival after that.
You could make some monumental sculpture using everything that you found after a festival…
J: With the dome tents alone you could make the most massive stage, or all stitched together into a huge hot air balloon…
One of your planned projects on the website is a tent.
S: We’re hoping to do that this year.
J: We’d like to take the tent to festivals, events and communities and be able to do big visual spectaculars. So it would be for staging as well as for our own thing – running workshops.
S: The original idea was to create a travelling mechanical circus, hence the name.
J: We want to get into producing electricity onsite – renewable energies. Eventually we’d like to go to places where they need small renewables and do projects just using the materials they have around them. That’s the dream…
Can you tell me about your inspirations?
J: ‘An outsider artist’, Bob Rowberry mentored me. He makes mechanical contraptions out of recycled metals and wind-driven stuff. Little wind contraptions using feathers and tin cans. I worked with him for quite a few summers, giving workshops and doing site décor for festivals and events.
Theo Jansen, the Dutch sculptor who makes walking wind-powered creatures on the beach. Jean Tinguely and Alexander Calder. I happened upon the Tinguely museum in Basel when we were doing this mad drive through Europe at Easter time. Just mind-blowing. He was from a similar background to me, a farming community, so loads of the machines were made out of bits of old farm equipment.
Other inspirations? Coffee. Coffee’s quite a big inspiration for me. Green tea for Sam. And biscuits!
S: Definitely biscuits… Music. James – he’s changed the way I work, taught me new techniques, new ways of looking at things. Mutoid Waste and Arcadia. It’s recycled sculpture, but it’s big… messy… diesel… junky… real 2000AD. Post-apocalyptic. They’re ecologically minded but looking at it from a different perspective.
J: Sam’s an amazing fiddle player and all his first sculptures were all string pieces – bows and sound chambers… There’s a delicacy about your work, Sam, even though you’re a blacksmith fabricator.
Reminds me of Studio Ghibli flying ships. Slightly whimsical, not entirely functional, little motifs…
S: Yeah, it’s got a bit of a Heath Robinson vibe to it.
J: We have plans for an airship…
You can see Circus Kinetica’s work as part of Hove Museum and Art Gallery’s Precious exhibition until May 2010. Circus Kinetica are also producing a collaborative visual arts / performance piece for the Brighton Fringe – The Deadly Sins of Palilalia.
For commissions, sales or to look at their range of recycled wood-burning stoves, contact James and Sam via their website at http://www.circuskinetica.com/.
Written by Jo Dimbleby
Circus Kinetica get elemental
Remember the names! James Caldicott and Samuel Apley, the founders of arts collective Circus Kinetica have big plans. I caught the inventive duo at their base beneath the Embassy Court edifice, where they craft their naturally powered automata and autostrumenta (self-playing instruments) from recycled materials.
How did you start working together?
James: We both came to Brighton to study in the same year, but didn’t know each other. Sam was at the Art College and I was up at the Architecture Department at Mithras House. After finishing uni, I used the foyer of Embassy Court as an Open House to exhibit some musical windmills that I’d made, with a soundtrack of the windmills recorded at different places in the building. It won first prize in the Brighton Fringe Visual Arts thing and I met Sam at the same time. Everyone had been telling me about this guy in town who’d been making water-powered instruments…
S: Yeah, big rain-powered instruments. I’d been commissioned after I finished my Wood, Metal, Ceramics and Plastics degree but was just working as a fabricator, doing welding and industrial stuff. I came to James’ Windjam private view and that was it. Quit my job and was like, ‘right, let’s start making things’.
J: Secret Garden Party festival were looking, so we made this piece with a piano. A large scorpion creature with a piano harp in it, a wind device to play it and loads of hammers for people to play it themselves. I think we did the whole thing in eight days, from drawing the thing to taking apart two pianos, using the big machines up at a forge near Stanmer Park, then coming down here to finish little bits and setting it up… What happened next?
S: Then Beachdown Festival…
J: Life water bottle company contacted us because someone who worked for them lived upstairs [Embassy Court]. They said, ‘We want to make a recycling point but turn it into a bit of a visual spectacular – have you got any ideas?’ We suggested this thing using old tent poles and bottles… went to V festival to go tatting for tent poles. Going to after-festivals, it’s like going to the end of the world.
S: As far as you can see, just derelict chaos. You find incredible things. Tents with crates of beer in them. Lights. Stereos.
J: The amount of barbecue packs – unbelievable. We had enough for every other festival after that.
You could make some monumental sculpture using everything that you found after a festival…
J: With the dome tents alone you could make the most massive stage, or all stitched together into a huge hot air balloon…
One of your planned projects on the website is a tent.
S: We’re hoping to do that this year.
J: We’d like to take the tent to festivals, events and communities and be able to do big visual spectaculars. So it would be for staging as well as for our own thing – running workshops.
S: The original idea was to create a travelling mechanical circus, hence the name.
J: We want to get into producing electricity onsite – renewable energies. Eventually we’d like to go to places where they need small renewables and do projects just using the materials they have around them. That’s the dream…
Can you tell me about your inspirations?
J: ‘An outsider artist’, Bob Rowberry mentored me. He makes mechanical contraptions out of recycled metals and wind-driven stuff. Little wind contraptions using feathers and tin cans. I worked with him for quite a few summers, giving workshops and doing site décor for festivals and events.
Theo Jansen, the Dutch sculptor who makes walking wind-powered creatures on the beach. Jean Tinguely and Alexander Calder. I happened upon the Tinguely museum in Basel when we were doing this mad drive through Europe at Easter time. Just mind-blowing. He was from a similar background to me, a farming community, so loads of the machines were made out of bits of old farm equipment.
Other inspirations? Coffee. Coffee’s quite a big inspiration for me. Green tea for Sam. And biscuits!
S: Definitely biscuits… Music. James – he’s changed the way I work, taught me new techniques, new ways of looking at things. Mutoid Waste and Arcadia. It’s recycled sculpture, but it’s big… messy… diesel… junky… real 2000AD. Post-apocalyptic. They’re ecologically minded but looking at it from a different perspective.
J: Sam’s an amazing fiddle player and all his first sculptures were all string pieces – bows and sound chambers… There’s a delicacy about your work, Sam, even though you’re a blacksmith fabricator.
Reminds me of Studio Ghibli flying ships. Slightly whimsical, not entirely functional, little motifs…
S: Yeah, it’s got a bit of a Heath Robinson vibe to it.
J: We have plans for an airship…
You can see Circus Kinetica’s work as part of Hove Museum and Art Gallery’s Precious exhibition until May 2010. Circus Kinetica are also producing a collaborative visual arts / performance piece for the Brighton Fringe – The Deadly Sins of Palilalia.
For commissions, sales or to look at their range of recycled wood-burning stoves, contact James and Sam via their website at http://www.circuskinetica.com/.
Written by Jo Dimbleby