This highly anticipated event, organised by Cabaret Mechanical Theatre and Automata Magazine, celebrates the intricate and enchanting art of automata. The festival, held from 9-11 May, has already sold out of three-day passes. There are still a limited number of tickets available for the AutomataFest Fair on Sunday 11 May, though, when the Observer Building (OB) will be transformed into a wonderland for automatists, makers, collectors, and enthusiasts from around the world. There is something for everyone to discover and learn, and guests will have the unique opportunity to see contemporary automata in action and meet the masterminds behind them.

In addition, there is a free exhibition, on 11 May, in the OB vaults and neighbouring Mechanical Making Space. Automata made by festival attendees will be showcased, alongside exhibits from Cabaret Mechanical Theatre’s world-renowned collection, including the epic Gormenghast castle by artist Keith Newstead.

Saturday 10 May will see a special screening of Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed film Hugo, with insights and behind-the-scenes stories from the film’s automata and horological consultant, Michael Start.

Film: Saturday 10 May, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery TN34 1ET

Tickets £5, Door 6 pm, Screening 7 pm

Book tickets at automatafest.com 

Hastings Pier, 14 Mar 2018-15 Apr 2018
REVIEW BY Colin Gibson

Hastings Pier and community arts company Culture Shift have collaborated to display the internationally famous Cabaret Mechanical Theatre free of charge until Sunday April 15th. Local organisations involved in the project include, Active Arts, Autism Sussex, Boathouse Theatre, Open Door (Hastings and Bexhill MENCAP), Parchment Trust, The Seaview Project and Southdown’s Wellbeing Centre, Bexhill). Amongst the special events accompanying the automata will be a talk (Thursday 12 April) on the changing fortunes of amusement arcades by a man whose work has done so much to enhance Southwold’s popular pier, eccentric designer and arcade owner Tim Hunkin.

The original Cabaret collection was started in 1979 from a craft shop in Cornwall before proprietor and artist Sue Jackson moved it to Covent Garden in 1984, where it rapidly acquired a cult following amongst automata enthusiasts. Her daughter Sarah Alexander, the theatre’s director, decided to take the collection on tour and is curating the Hastings pier exhibition. Some of the work on display includes pieces by renowned artists in the field.
Paul Spooner’s Spaghetti-Eating Man in A Bath, Matt Smith’s Swimming Fish and Peter Markey’s Wave Machine are exhibited alongside pieces from Keith Newstead, Ron Fuller, Carlos Zapata and The Creativist Network, a consortium of local community organisations.

“….these machines have no earthly function. They have a wry, mordant distinctly English humour to them, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll and Monty Python – but with the feeling of the penny arcade”
– San Francisco Chronicle

A range of other events will take place including Family Workshops, in which local artists and
teachers will show children how to make their own automata, and Automata Community Day (Saturday 24 March 1.30-4.30pm), run by Culture Shift and The Creativist Network, where, accompanied by music, performance and refreshment, all the work made as part of the project will be exhibited.

• For more information visit Hastings Pier, Cabaret, Culture Shift, Craftivists

The Rise of the Automaton

The fascinating art of automata creation has been around far longer than most people imagine. Figurines with moveable limbs, sometimes lever-operated, were found in Egyptian tombs around 2,000BC. Early examples of automata included jackal masks with articulated bottom jaws and terracotta doves with detachable wings.    

More elaborate machines evolved, often encouraged by royal patrons such as the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus (c. 835), whose throne was flanked by mechanical roaring lions and birds that sang in trees of gold. 

By the 1830s in the narrow alleys of the Marais district of Paris, artisans were developing ingenious batch production methods in order to bring automatons of singing birds, circus performers and music hall celebrities into the home. By the time Robert Houdin premiered his mix of magic and automata, Soiree Fantastiques in 1844, there was huge public interest in the form.  

Automata featured regularly in Trade Exhibitions during the second half of the 19th century and exports boomed. During the 1889 Paris Exhibition, one American diplomat noted that
fine French automata were now to be found in all the large department stores in America. However, the dominance of French automata across the world was in decline by 1920, a decline accelerated by the advent of the electric motor. The popularity of automata in general gradually subsided as the 20th century unfolded, being mainly confined to seaside-style ‘end of the pier’ machines which, nevertheless, continue to fascinate us as they have for centuries.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this article from Hastings Independent. The future of this volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.

Earlier this month at Hastings Station, Judy Rogers and Nigel Sinden, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Hastings, opened ‘Welcome to Hastings’, a lively, multimedia exhibit brought to us by the not-for-profit Zoom Arts group. Thus opened another exciting year of art exhibitions in these two remarkably artistic conjoining towns. Here are some highlights of what to see and what to expect in the first half of 2018.

One outstanding exhibition from last year, ‘A Sense of Place: Topographic Views from the Museum Collection’ at the Hastings Museum & Art Gallery, will continue to be on view until 11th March. The exhibition provides a small but enlightening pictorial insight into the changing appearance of Hastings and the changing way it was perceived from the nineteenth century to the nineteen-nineties. Glimpses of the approach to Hastings from London Road and grand perspectives of Pelham Crescent in its heyday stand out for the way they invite us to contemplate aspects of the town on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Don’t miss the (rather poignant) views of Hastings cricket ground, in the corridor outside the exhibition gallery, from the days before it was Priory Meadow!

Further on in the year, Hastings Museum & Art Gallery will host ‘SoCo Collect’, involving the East Sussex SoCo artist collective (originally ‘South Coast Artists’). The fourteen artists who make up the collective will exhibit new works responding to items in the museum or with the theme of collecting, i.e. the impulse to collect things whatever those things may be, or both. The exhibition will spread throughout the galleries with some works curated alongside items already in the collection. Hopefully the exhibition will serve not only as a display of local talent and artistic engagement with the past, but also as a means of drawing public attention to the museum’s rich and diverse collection of natural and cultural artefacts.

At the Jerwood Gallery, ‘Gus Cummins: Off the Wall’, on view from the end of January to mid-April, will comprise a retrospective spanning the length of the artist’s career from the 1960s to the present. Cummins – ‘one of Britain’s greatest contemporary artists you’ve never heard of’ – remains somewhat overlooked in the wider public eye; this despite his prolific output, the wide exposure his work has received throughout the UK in public and private galleries and his election as Royal Academician in 1992. Cummins’ paintings are profoundly unnerving, surrealistic abstractions evoking a hellish world of shadows, skeletal matter and inexplicable machinery. Victoria Howarth, the Jerwood Gallery’s Exhibition’s Curator, believes the retrospective will establish Cummins’ reputation as one of the nation’s leading artists: “This is Cummins’ first major solo public gallery exhibition in the UK, and it is time to recognise this great talent.”

 From mid-March to mid-April, Hastings Pier (congratulations on winning the RIBA Stirling Prize!), in collaboration with the Community Interest Company, Culture Shift, will host an exhibition of automata made by members of the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre. This unique exhibition is bound to intrigue and delight. Since its foundation in 1979, the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre has built a worldwide reputation as one of the leading perpetuators of the centuries-old tradition of crafting automata (self-moving mechanical figures often performing humorous or bizarre actions). And rightly so, for its fanciful creations are meticulously handcrafted and reminiscent of the weird and wonderful world of the fin-de-siècle circus. Look out for Matt Smith’s swimming fish (pictured left), Peter Markey’s wave machines and Paul Spooner’s famous spaghetti-eating man in a bath!

This is a momentous year for Project Art Works, an organisation that for the past twenty-one years has been committed to giving people with complex needs the space and support to apply themselves to the visual arts. This remarkable organisation, based in one of the arches under Linton Road, is now increasing its premises to a second arch, thereby doubling the space available. The new space will be inaugurated with an evening of music music and a supported studio exhibition on 16 February. The exhibition continues to 11 March.

2018 also marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Hastings Arts Forum. To celebrate this milestone, artists Robin Holtom, Charlotte Snook and Matthew Burrows will curate an exhibition under the title Festival 15, which will run from 2nd May for two weeks. The aim of the festival is to bring attention to the depth and breadth of art on offer in the area. HAF will be contacting other local galleries and arts organisations to seek out ways to make sure that this opportunity to gain recognition is all encompassing. The exhibition at the Forum’s gallery will bring the work of highly regarded artists together in one place and thereby shine a light on the richness of the arts scene in Hastings and St. Leonards.

Electro Studios Project Space, a newer venue, situated further west along the seafront in a building overlooking the disused lido (now a grassy wasteland), has an exhibition lined up for July which will involve two German artists, Christian Gode and Elisabeth Sonneck. These artists – both of whom have exhibited widely in Germany but to my knowledge have yet to be shown in the UK – create minimalist, space-specific, quasi-three-dimensional work that challenges our preconceptions of space and form.

For more information: zoom arts, www.hmag.org.uk, Culture Shift, Hastings Pier, Project Art Works, Hastings Arts Forum, Electro Studios Project Space

We hope you have enjoyed reading this article from Hastings Independent Press. The future of this volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.