Bailey, Clayton. Robot Sculptures

Bailey, Clayton. Robot Sculptures. 1976 f.

From Bailey's website: "Clayton Bailey has made approximately 100 life-size robot sculptures of found objects since 1976. He searches the local flea markets and scrap metal yards for discarded home appliances, cookware, bicycle and automobile parts. He carefully grafts the parts together into new forms; reincarnating them as robot sculptures. The 'past lives' of the robot's various 'mechanical molecules' are said to give them their soul." The metal sculptures "range from the humanoid to the pet dog or exotic bird or insect. They don't walk around and break your china and endanger your art collection. They are static; they stand still and blink their lights. (The robot sculptures sometimes function as clocks and radios that speak and sing in the native tongue wherever they travel.)"[1] Among his most usefully notorious and controversial, is Sweetheart: a "busty female robot" sculpture that is "also a functional coffee maker," removed from display at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California at Berkeley.[2]

7. GRAPH, RDE, 22/XI/14