In my early twenties, I would spend a lot of time in scrapyards with my father. His favriote was a place called Albert Looms & sons, known affectionately to the locals as “Looms,s “ in spondon in derby. It was housed in seven acres next to a disused railway track next to the A52.

This place dealt in auto and sometimes moped and motorcycle parts. Smashed up veichles after smashed up vehicles would litter the landscape with what seemed like mountains of of smashed up t.v,s ,

old valve radios, speakers and washing machines, burned out scooters and bike frames.The ground was oil soaked and glass ridden. It was dangerous with its motorised fallout but it was magical in that it was reflective

to as each vehicle haveing a story and sometimes they gave away obvious signs. Sometimes you would hear they had been involved in brutal collisions from the blokes on the gate some were scrapped because there owners had passed away.

To mechanics, recyclers and makers, it was full of treasure. I and my dad would look for Reliant and v.w. beetle engines, chassis and axles to buy and then make into 3 wheeler custom trikes, we once came away with a Variant Porsche engine for the sum of 60 pound and it was truly back breaking getting it out of there and loaded onto a truck. This was not a business we ran, we were hobbyists we fashioned these vehicles out of a passion for the art in that we created. they were long forked chopped creations with solo, three seats sometimes two, ape hanger handle bars, and thick alloy back wheels with general grabber race tyres. Some had army surplus, ammunition boxes on mounted at the back, some had fibreglass body shells. We would search for engines, speedometers, indicators in a landscape that in all the chaos was surrounded at the edges by netted fencing were Nettles, brambles and the odd old birch tree had encroached. Some had embraced and were clinched around the section were the older cars were , wrapping around vintage wheel archers strands of grass and ivy stretched out over remnants of floor and along bonnets and through absent headlights. Nature reclaiming , root growing through rust. I would look at these vehicles and against all there odds imagine them if they were still working, if by some process to cheat aerodynamics, and shape , seats with the leather ripped exposed springs and sometimes even the absence of wheels could live in there state of decay and go through the gears once more.

I reminise about this because over the last ten years these memories have come fourth and influenced my more recent Artwork and Animation. Wreckage , rambleing roses , organic infestation in abandoned places. Industry grinding to a holt, plants and creatures making new habitation in a world tired of formation and humanity’s tick box mentality.

In Down to spinny my first foray into stop motion animation, after years of loving the medium I wanted to explore themes of visual urban industrial decay and a kind of natural reclamation.