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Tony Mann

I started making toys in 1974 after working over twenty years as a designer. Now I am perhaps better known for making automata.These are usually operated by winding handles and give me the opportunity to indulge what people have called my quirky sense of humour. I prefer making one of a kind pieces and exploring fresh ideas, although I occasionally make short runs of smaller toys. My larger pieces can take three or four months to make and have generally been commissioned by galleries and museums.

The vernacular and industrial crafts have always appealed to me more than polite art and I enjoy visiting museums more than art galleries for that reason. The machines, tools, toys and advertising of the nineteenth century, for example, often have the sense of having been made by anonymous individuals who really cared about the quality of their work. I enjoy hunting through second-hand shops and junk yards for things that have this quality and that I might be able to incorporate into my own pieces.

A few years ago I made a series of wooden fishes which explored relationships between the useful and the useless. Some where montaged with old documents or technical drawings; some had machine parts or rusted hardware; some looked as though they had been found on the sea shore. Most had numbers or lettering of some sort. They hinted at functions which were unclear and enigmatic.I am continuing to explore contrasts and ambiguities; between functional and non-functional, old and new, between machines and humans for example. But thesepieces should not be taken too seriously. Part of their function is to poke fun at their function.

The Medici Gallery has exhibited Tony’s work for the past eight years and only ever receive two to four pieces of work a year.

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