Sunday, February 23, 2014

THE LEGS EXPRESS : THE BIKE THAT JACK BUILT

Well, to be honest it took two of us to make them but that sounds better as a title.  Certainly it has been Jack’s vision and initiative that has realised his dream.

A little over a year ago a young fella called Jack Ladd approached me with an idea.  We had become buddies through various cycling connections and he had started getting excited by the reconfiguration of cycles and freak riding in general.  Jack started to talk about an epiphany he had -he was going to build a cargo bike, dress it up as a taxi and ride around during the Adelaide Fringe, taking people where they wanted to go, in exchange for money.  He had a handful of loosely scrawled drawings, a printed out instructable guide on how to make a cargo bike and a particularly wild look in his eye. 

I must admit I was mildly sceptical of the whole thing but I do have a soft spot for constructing strange things with wheels and Jack’s energy was somewhat contagious.  So we set about building the beast under the lemon tree of my suburban back yard.  Here’s a few shots of us writhing around in the dust and heat, bringing the contraption to life.  In hindsight it’s difficult to believe we smashed out the first one in just a few days.


As it turns out Jack’s ‘Legs Express’ was a huge success. And so, after spending the year living on a barge in distant France Jack returned with visions of going bigger and bolder.  He decided he would like some assistance to build two more bikes, which would be added to his existing one, forming a kind of fruity fun time human taxi fleet.  This time around we had access to the slightly less dusty but equally sweaty workshop of the awesome Adelaide Bike Kitchen.  I had a few ideas on how I wanted to tweak the design and Jack came with his usual bucket loads of enthusiasm.  After a big fat week of alchemy, brute force and self generated luck we had two more chariots of joy.

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Jack then enlisted the assistance of his lovely creative family and friends to help him decorate some rather fantastic passenger helmets and put the finishing touches on his purple people carriers.  The Adelaide Fab Lab helped Jack to realise his great laser cut rider helmet additions. 

The Legs Express is currently out and about, cutting laps of Adelaide’s CBD, providing great local service and offering much more than just a simple A to B delivery.  The Legs Express is a whole and wonderful experience.  Look out for Jack and his team during your Fringe experience- as he says - “If you’ve got somewhere to be - I’ve got the legs!”





Monday, February 17, 2014

FINDON SKID KIDS : CYCLE SPEEDWAY

These guys have been a long standing source of inspiration in suburban Adelaide.  Even growing up in the country I have vivid memories of them coming to our local agricultural show to perform.  The experience left me dreaming of being a Skid Kid for a good decade or so.  This week it's their birthday and there'll be a little ride across to Findon to check out their action and help them celebrate.

If you are not so familiar with the legend of the Findon Skid Kids, do yourself a favour and check out some of their history here.  Also, for your viewing pleasure I have included a short doco produced a couple of years ago by Tilt Vision.  Cycle Speedway racing is truly exciting and whilst some of you may have seen footage playing as late night gap filler on local television, this does not do justice to the adrenaline filled action that goes down on the track.  Nor does it do justice to the culture and families whose lives revolve around Cycle Speedway.



FINDON SKID KIDS - Both Sides Of The Track. from Tilt Vision on Vimeo.

Oh, did I forget to mention that they also like to jump through walls of fire?!


Friday, February 14, 2014

WILD MOTION

Over the last year or so this blog has provided me the opportunity to reflect upon intersections between my creative and cycling passions. It has led to many great conversations and some fantastic opportunities. Mostly it has revolved around investigations into tall bikes and their various potentials. It has also set my own context within which to begin examining how these things fit together for me and to begin to look at what sorts of ideas might be tied to them. Often the kinds of questions I return to are ‘Is this art?’ or ‘What kind of art is this?’ These are irritatingly massive questions that rarely have a straight answer. 

What is clear to me is that I continue to be excited by creativity, cycling, adventure, performance and public intervention. These things will always be part of my life and may sometimes even make their way into the things that I choose to present in galleries. So, at this point, I am undertaking a mild rebranding of this blog in order to broaden it’s potential. You can expect to see more of the same things with a bit more variation and extension of ongoing themes. I have chosen the title ‘WILD MOTION’ as I believe it implies many of the things I am excited by – adventure, wheels, movement, creativity, risk, to name a few. This is a simple shift in context that allows me to think about, play with and present a richer bunch of ideas. 

An important objective of this project is that it remains driven by content creation rather than content perpetuation. Stay tuned!