Sunday, March 16, 2008

The art of Wilf Lunn.

"The Marquee Press"
"I found that in my life, I set out to do something and put a lot of effort in to it but when I show the project to someone they say "That's very nice but could you do this for us instead". For example, when I got some publicity for putting a bicycle in a bottle, the only interest that was shown was by a man who telephoned me to ask, "Are you the man that put a bicycle in a bottle?" When I excitedly replied that I was, he said, "You can help me… I reckon that if you can put a bicycle in a bottle you'll be able to show me how to make a three-piece suit cheaper than any one else".

"The Miss World Phrenological Judging Cycle"

"Ideas given surrealistic form can so easily be inert, vulgar, or pretentiously overwrought in both the psychological and physical senses. The exact opposite is the case here. Wilfred Lunn, " an art teacher by profession, an inventor by inclination", has found a perfect vehicle (pun intended) for his ideas about the daunting fact of existence. His little pedal cycles (averaging between one and two feet high) integrate two qualities exactly fulfilling their creator's intention - a sense of cool mechanical precision, and a wise, sly, sentient "biological" rightness, inevitability. Their refined visual elegance is no doubt due to the discipline imposed by the necessity to express ideas within well-defined formal limits. Painted a mat metallic black these small mechanically functional devices accommodate their surreal, Heath Robinson appendages as neatly, purposefully, as a rifle accommodates a bayonet. On a bicycle intended for clerical use, a pair of pedal-operated hands dispense mechanical Episcopal blessings. Elsewhere a spike harness refurbishes medieval ideas in the role of a Fat Child and Reluctant Pensioner Exerciser. The humour very English, while not always as savage as this, comments with invariable elegance, sardonically, upon humanity and its often preposterous institutions. Incidentally, the descriptive titles of the cycles' specific functions are a necessary part of one's full appreciation, but are mostly too lengthy to quote here."

-Richard Walker.

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