Rafał Zajko
Zajko’s kinetic art reflects his upbringing in post-communist Poland, intertwining personal memories with family history to explore the complexities of modernity, time, and technology. Zajko’s kinetic sculpture ‘Sisyphus’ is a colossal pendulum that evokes a sense of exhaustion and monotony. We contemplate our disconnect from our own natural internal rhythms, as we feel like cogs in a mechanised world.
You can find more of Rafał’s work on his website or Instagram.
Lucy Gregory
Lucy Gregory is a graduate of the Royal College of art, creating Kinetic sculptures that are activated by audience participation. Combining humour with the bodily, Gregory creates uncanny and bizarre sets – from kinetic kaleidoscopes to rotating legs, or clapping hands to giant pointing fingers. Her surreal sculptural collages complicate the relationship between materiality and virtuality, as they take a life of their own as misbehaving assemblages.
You can find more of Lucy’s work on her website or Instagram.
Tobias Bradford
Swedish born, Stockholm and London-based artist Tobias Bradford creates kinetic sculptural installations, blending elements from mechanical engineering, robotics, illusionism and puppetry. The artist expresses why his autonomous machines provoke a sense of uncanny and disembodiment: “Similarly to how a word can become absurd when uttered repeatedly, an action or a moment which is stuck in a loop can reveal some of the strangeness of everyday life.”
You can find more of Tobias’ work on his website or Instagram.
Hanfei
Hanfei are a collective who create kinetic art by modernising mechanical approaches through metal and wood craftsmanship. They create work in the hopes of provoking the audience to feel a sense of nostalgia and curiosity, stimulating playfulness and joy. Their work ‘Whispering/呢喃低语’ uses the natural elements of wind and rain to strike the typewriter elements of the kinetic sculpture, simulating a poetic dialogue of whispers between nature and humanity within an evocative setting.
You can find more of Hanfei’s work on their website or Instagram.
Rie Nakajima
London-based sculptor Rie Nakajima transforms indoor and outdoor spaces into auditory landscapes by blending motorized devices with everyday objects like rubbers, batteries, rulers, cans, and clock springs. Her kinetic installations often extend into live performances, introducing an element of chance where objects create a canon effect rather than moving simultaneously.
You can find more of Rie’s work on her website or Instagram.
Nicky Assmann
Nicky Assmann is an artist based in Rotterdam whose work takes a starting point of immaterial and intangible character of light, colour and motion for her spatial installations. With a background in Film and ArtScience, she combines artistic, scientific and cinematographic knowledge in experiments that use physical and chemical processes, such as turbulence and fluid dynamics. For her work ‘The Abysses of the Scorching Sun’, the kinetic light installation explores passage of time, the finite and the infinite, global warming and the changing climate of our planet.
You can find more of Nicky’s work on her website or Instagram.
Fabiane Lee-Perrella
Fabiane Lee-Perrella is a designer, artist, lecturer, and founder of Flour Studio, which is actively engaged in a new type of creative practice that reaches beyond specialist boundaries. ‘Everyone’s Air’ is a kinetic sculpture in collaboration with children and staff from KS1 at St Dunstans College to explore our basic need of clean air. The group put together 99 wind turbines, with each being painted by blowing air into paper tubes to spread a highly pigmented inks onto cloth.
You can find more of Fabiane’s work on her website or Instagram.
Glen Farley
Glen Farley is a Canadian/Norwegian artist who creates complex moving sculptures dealing with contemporary technological, social and political issues using an old-fashioned expression. ‘Childhood’ engages the senses of sight and hearing, with a third sense: smell. The result is a kinetic scent sculpture/installation and a compelling multisensory experience. The kinetic art is centred on four significant memories from the artist’s childhood, allowing the viewer to be present in them.
You can find more of Glen’s work on his website or Instagram.
Myles Mansfield
Myles Mansfield is a South Wales artist that constructs kinetic automata from recycled materials that explore how being human is changing in the 21st century due to our integration with technology. Human relationships have changed since Rodin’s time, the vast majority of relationships and interactions we have do not require the presence of the other person. In response to Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’, this kinetic sculpture is made from recycled scrap metal and wood.
You can find more of Myles’ work on his website.
Ian Wolter
Ian Wolter is an Essex based artist whose practice is mainly concerned with the abuse of power in society. His work ‘The View from Here’ is the world’s first beachball orrery, a working model of the solar system which includes many different sized, illuminated beach balls, the biggest over a metre across. The kinetic artwork addresses the growing belief that humans will soon step beyond Earth.
You can find more of Ian’s work on his website.
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Authors
Bethan Jayne Goddard
