Retro Robot
Emily Morgan
KUBE
11 July 2009 - 19 September 2009
In its first summer as Kube, the venue formerly known as The Study Gallery played host to artist James Johnson-Perkins and his Retro Robot exhibition. The gallery is in Poole, a short walk through Poole Park from the Dolphin shopping centre. Entering on the ground floor you are greeted by two robots made out of plastic storage boxes that tower over you. Judging by the enthusiastic reactions of my fellow visitors, the effect is particularly impressive if you are under five years old.
Primary coloured square mats and plastic building blocks provide a landscape for these and hundreds of smaller Lego robots, which are positioned around a course like characters in a platform game. Shelves made of coloured bricks allow the game to continue up the walls, around a large flat screen monitor playing a robot dance animation that looks like it has been created in ‘Logo.’
All this lends some colour to the modernist glass and white cement building, and the small feet running up and down the exposed staircases on the first and second floor link the three spaces together splendidly. As the Lego robots look on, the main business of the ground floor is the construction of robots out of scrap cardboard and packaging. Children crowd around the making tables in the middle of the room, supervised by volunteers. Among the best constructions I saw was a boy who turned his little brother into a robot with a cardboard box head and body.
At the foot of the first flight of stairs there is a turntable and a stack of 45s from the 1980s, from Joy Division to Kim Wilde, for visitors to select and play. I saw some lovely conversations here between parents and their children, introducing them to this strange old fashioned means of playing music. The retro element starts here, on the first floor there are 80s film quotes on LED scrolling message boards and you can play Pac-man. Text signs on the walls made out of Lego saying things like DUB BE GOOD TO ME are positioned so they seem to whiz around your head. There is also voice changer software and a screen that makes your face look funny. Kids entering this zone may be discovering Pac-Man for the first time but even the smallest of them are already very good with keyboards and mice, they run up and get stuck in straight away. There are also some big building bricks to build your own versions of the robots downstairs and a sound sculpture with wooden blocks.
As the Study Gallery, Kube built up an education programme that should be the envy of other venues in the region, with regular workshops for all age groups of children as well as craft groups for adults. Retro Robot integrates education elements with the main show in a real way and in doing so introduces young children to the concept of an exhibition, with instructions on what you can touch and what you can only look at, without the stakes being too high. The exhibition provided a focus for events throughout the summer, which brought in older children and teenagers to the gallery. A van full of media equipment parked in the courtyard gave people the chance to make animation and mix music. There were beat boxing workshops lead by Stu Robson and a learn to DJ event with Leon Hollings. On certain days you could come in and build remote control robots and on others visitors helped James Johnson-Perkins and some student volunteers build a Lego city to add to the display. The exhibition brought more young families into the main gallery programme, and made it an attraction for tourists and locals in the summer holidays. Grandparents with visiting relatives also came in large numbers. This is the first exhibition the gallery has decided to charge for, but it was positioned lower than other family centred events in the area. The 1980s nostalgia element may have been an extra draw for some parents, alongside finding somewhere to entertain the kids. Once there, shared experience of popular culture came into play and created a convivial atmosphere. The young ones bonded over the Lego while the adults exchanged looks and comments about records and films in a pseudo-ironic way. As one of the visitor comments read, ‘I am now officially retro.’ Kube reports they had four times the usual number of visitors over the summer. The exhibition has helped to increase awareness of the venue in the local area, which was one of the objectives of their relaunch in April. Comments in the visitor book are full of vows to return to the gallery soon. Involving a group of volunteers to supervise the interactive exhibits has created more links with the community and a potential source of manpower for the future.
On the day the exhibition opened, local school children, students and office workers came together to dance like robots to Kraftwerk. The world record attempt for the largest group to do so failed by seven heads but was no less life affirming for it. Two hundred and seventy people turned out and dressed up in elaborate costumes for no reason other than fun. What better way to use popular culture to promote art can there possibly be?
Retro Robot (2009)
James Johnson Perkins
Photo: Denis Roberts
