The works of Edward Bersudsky are on display at The Oxfordshire Museum. Pic © Robin Mitchell
Exhibition: Sharmanka Travelling Circus & Gothic Kinetic, The Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock, until March 29 2009.
Eduard Bersudsky’s Sharmanka lies somewhere between gothic art, cabaret performance, creepy theatre and clanging mechanisms.
Circus is probably the best word with which to tag the twisted creations of the Russian engineering genius, who started out as a carver 45 years ago, going on to infuriate the KGB in an anti-establishment display of non-conformity in the late 1970s, when he also took to sculpting giant figures for playgrounds in the parks and gardens of Leningrad.
The group behind Sharmanka were used to a nomadic lifestyle before it began touring. Pic © Robin Mitchell
At the same time he started making “kinemats” – kinetic sculptures with electrical motors – with “pieces of old furniture, scrap metal and grotesque carved figures.”
The Communist regime he lived under meant the robots were only witnessed by friends in his home until 1989, when theatre director Tatyana Jakovskaya visited the flat and arranged a performance to supplement their moves with music, light and shadowplay, launching the Sharmanka (hurdy-gurdy in Russian) Kinetic Theatre in the suitably eerie grounds of a former kindergarten in St Petersburg.
Communist rule in Russia prevented Bersudsky from publicising the kinetics for years. Pic © Robin Mitchell
Since then, Bersudsky has taken his work to the International Puppet Festival in Utrecht, made three sculptures for the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art and been commissioned by the National Museum of Scotland, as well as institutes in Copenhagen and Jerusalem.
The pieces spent two years in an old country house on the Scottish borders and a year in a derelict warehouse in Manchester, but a grant from the National Lottery and Glasgow City Council allowed Bersudsky to create a performance hall in 1996, adding new works to the show every year and providing performance workshops for schools.
Mime and Puppet Festivals have welcomed the exhibition. Pic © Robin Mitchell
In January 2002, Sharmanka performed Noah’s Ark in the foyer of the Royal National Theatre at the London International Mime Festival, followed by a major exhibition at Covent Garden’s Theatre Museum, and the Gothic Theatre is the second international tour for the company.
Old sewing machines, bicycle wheels and forgotten domestic machinery combine with animal skulls and speaking sculptures which tell stories of life, death, cruelty and beauty, whirring and clattering through dramatic sequences of sound and light in 30-minute performances.
Old sewing machines and bicycle wheels are among the items deployed in the unusual, faintly creepy creations. Pic © Robin Mitchell
30-minute performance takes place every 75 minutes. Drop-in workshops for families run between 2pm-4pm on Tuesday (February 17 2009), £1 per child, no booking required.
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