Clare Pattinson was featured on Britain’s Channel 4 television programme Sunday Brunch* discussing her latest automatons, and how it all started with the What is Food? exhibition at Moonbow Margate.
Clare’s work will feature prominently in the upcoming AI Innovation Hub in Great Yarmouth, which opens in 2020, connecting the dots between algorithms, robots and the future. For more, visit www.haphazard.business
Originally posted on former Wix blog 9th September 2011
Cliftonville based artist, Clare Pattinson created a series of innovative food menus that were designed specifically for the handmade menu holders as part of the ‘What is Food?’ exhibition at The Lido in Margate, and also for the Dining Club of Margate
Food Police
The three menu holders are humorous automatons, a kind of interactive mechanical toy, inviting the diner to partake in the animation of the characters on top of the wooden mechanical boxes. The characters signify the food police in pursuit of the food thief, and aims to question food fashions, food propaganda and expectations and prejudices around food.
Clare has worked with street homeless people for the past twenty-five years and finds it interesting how ‘we’, as a society regard food. This is heightened when she observes some of the clients she has worked with, who have more pressing dependences such as alcohol or substance misuse, or people with eating disorders who have little interest in food other than as a necessity or fuel. On the other hand, there are people dying around the world from lack of basic nutrition, which sometimes makes the whole food rhetoric business appear even more absurd.
The automata or mechanical toys are made from wood, copper and various found materials in and around skips in Cliftonville. They bring together Clare’s skills as an animator, Cartoonist, illustrator, plumber, ceramicist, model maker, woodworker and anthropologist.
Sunday Brunch Photos | Channel 4
*Sunday Brunch, Channel 4, episode 44, Watch Here
For biography and to view Clare’s work further visit: http://www.clarepattinsonillustration.com
