Friday 6 June 2014

Rowland Emett


Rowland Emett will be familiar to many as the designer of Caractacus Potts' inventions in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was the creator of automata and an accomplished cartoonist, a cross between Ronald Searle and William Heath Robinson, perhaps with Wilf Lunn as his idiot bastard son.

Emett designed the trains on the miniature railway that operated at the Festival of Britain in 1951.


His work is primarily concerned with a jokey visual entertainment rather than serious artistic endeavor, but there is always room for humour in art. He produced a number of public artworks and this collaboration with Honeywell computers that appeared at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition:

 

Emett is currently the subject of a nice looking exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which can be seen during installation here:


The Rowland Emett Society have very kindly provided the delightful soundtrack to the exhibition on Soundcloud. 

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