When Sally Kindberg and her robots went south

Last week I visited the Bargehouse on the river Thames’s south bank, site of a remarkable exhibition twenty-five years ago, held at the Museum Of, and organised by curator Clare Patey. During the exhibition, a film crew from Welsh TV interviewed me and my robot companions … one of the robots got a bit over excited about this and refused to shut down.  Annoyingly I can’t locate any of the photos I took in situ at the time, although I took these robot portraits before they travelled.  The following feature was written at the time for the Independent newspaper. 

Robby, ForceBot and YM-3 travelled south of the river Thames last week in a giant Twiglets box, tenderly wrapped in mauve tissue paper. They and the rest of my robot collection were off to the Bargehouse on the South Bank in London to take part in an exhibition called ‘The Museum of Collectors’. During the last few weeks, unusual objects have been arriving at the Bargehouse.

This building, now also known as The Museum Of, is a turn-of-the century warehouse behind the Oxo Tower, to which it was formerly joined, built on a site once used to store Henry VIII’s barge. It was later associated with the production of artificially elongated eggs for pork pies, and then left empty for many years.

Forty-two collectors, aged between 7 and 70, agreed to lend their most treasured possessions for the Bargehouse’s first exhibition.  A few months before, cards were given out at the Oxo Tower asking local people for suggestions for the subject of the first exhibition. Proposals included silence, ping-pong balls, stuffed bosses, espionage, Charlton Athletic, lost property, numbers and what could have been.

What they’re getting is perhaps even more bizarre – not only collections of things but the collectors as well, gazing out from black and white photographs or hovering anxiously, making sure their trolls, toast-racks and electrical insulators are coping away from home for the first time. The gazers are going to be gazed at.

Before its official opening, the place was full of frantic building activity and the strong smell of floor sealant. The first and second floors were being transformed. A singing workman was painting one small room sugar-pink ready for a Dolly Parton experience. A greenhouse was being prepared for the snail collection, whose owner has a snail tattoo and is secretary of the Conchological Society. Empty drawers and a variety of glass cases and constructions were waiting to receive Kinder eggs, Romanian carrier bags and soft drink cans – full ones. “I like their continuous surface and weight’” said their collector.

Dazzled by the light bulb collection suspended from the high ceiling, I was slightly confused by some lopped branches – was this the aviary for the sentimental owls or part of the smallest collection (six) of liberated tree stumps?  Loops of buttons rejected by their clothing, part of a collection of 10,000, drooped over unpacked boxes. Unfortunately the puddle collection will not be on show – it was too complicated to transport from its shed in Newcastle.

Why do people collect? When does a collection become an obsession? One collector was horrified by my vagueness about the dates and provenance of some of my robots. His collection of toys is meticulously listed and annotated.

People have different motives for collecting. Sometimes it’s for aesthetic, sentimental or nostalgic reasons, sometimes because of a need to impose order, or to “rescue” abandoned objects. What is it about plastic monsters that will leave one person cold but make another’s heart beat faster and want to fill their home with 3,000 of them? And when is a collection complete?

We had all filled in a questionaire.  Rather foolishly I’d described my robots as my mechanical playmates. “And why do you like playing with your robots?” Someone asked me kindly. “Because I can turn them on and off!” I blurted. But it’s not just that.  I’m intrigued by their being not-quite-human and not-quite-machine, by their playful or menacing association with space and time travel.

I’m delighted by their shiny, brightly covered surfaces printed with mysterious dials and mechanical workings, the sparks that fly out from their eyes and stomachs, the clanking and whirring of their metallic limbs as they are activated by clockwork or battery. I do have human friends of course.  I think.

My children’s book Robotina Finds Out was published by Faber.  She once travelled to Japan, and is now happily at home on the shelf above my desk with other robots.

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One Response to When Sally Kindberg and her robots went south

  1. Pingback: Travelling to Mars by boat | Sally Kindberg's Blog

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