POISON MARACAS

A theatre installation, the audience can come and go freely throughout.

Poison Maracas continues Tim Spooner’s investigations into the peripheral, the feedback loop and the attempt to disappear. This little chaotic puppet show is an experiment in measuring the causes and effects between particular coordinates: the fingertips, the shoulder blades, the toes, the wall, the floor.

"The work started as a sudden thought while walking in the streets in central Prague, where there are hundreds of shops for tourists selling marionettes, many of these depicting Pinocchio. There was something overwhelming about his image reproduced in so many similar but slightly different versions, and different sizes, hanging en masse and swinging slightly on their strings. I thought about the familiarity of his image, of him as the most famous marionette, of him as a tragic and wayward figure, of his smile, and of marionettes as both exquisite objects and cheap toys.

My two Pinocchios are shadow versions, they are there to be looked at and not looked at at the same time. They are still Pinocchios but some of their Pinocchioness has been drained or removed. They are images but they are also just aerials, measures of some other movements elsewhere.

The title refers to something fun and dangerous and deceptive and occupying the two hands. The ambiguous possibilities of the hands. I think the hands are the most interesting parts of the body, the organs which are most capable of violence, pleasure and puppetry." - Tim Spooner

Tim Spooner works in a mix of performance, painting and sculpture, aiming for new strong flavours which are weird and alluring. Fundamentally interested in unpredictability, his work is an exercise in balancing control with a lack of it in the handling of the materials he is working with. His work has been presented extensively in theatres and galleries in the UK, Europe and Asia. Most recently, A Wave in A Cave, a solo exhibition of paintings and moving sculptures, was shown at Commonage Gallery, London. He lives and works in London.