Robert Race

Our local arts centre, New Brewery Arts, is hosting a small exhibitions of moving toys and automata by the artist, Robert Race. I've just been.

Robert Race used to teach science; now he's a full-time artist, working almost entirely with found objects and detritus, which includes a lot of driftwood, to create wonderful, moving pieces. Some of the works are wall-sized and explicitly mechanical, others are much smaller with subtler mechanisms. And most charming; I almost bought a small bird chasing a bee, made from driftwood and clockwork (the reason I didn't is I've never bought directly from an exhibition before, one in progress, and, as visitors were encouraged to play with the objects, I don't know what happens if a bought object gets broken).

However, the piece I liked best in the exhibition I couldn't afford. Titled, Nothing much happening in black & white, it actually featured a pair of counter-rotating, stylised propeller aircraft flying around a slender and upright log, driftwood probably, the mechanism powered by gravity using a shorter, detachable log as a weight. The whole thing was about eight foot tall and would've looked great had I owned a room of sufficient height to do it justice.

There is a website but it doesn't even begin to do the work justice. You'll just have to seek them out for yourself.