Simon Penny

Big Wheels

(a requiem for the industrial revolution)
Timber and plywood, steel, mechanics and electronics
10ft high, 8 ft wide,  1992-93


Like Pride of our young nation, Big Wheels is a transhistorical technological portrait. It is a ghost, silent and delicate, of a brutish technology.

It is autonomously powered, and moves around its own axis, its attention turned inward. Its movement is extremely slow, just on the threshold of perception. The installation included a soundtrack intermixing bagpipe lament with pneumatic exhaust sounds.