Steven Pippin

Steven Pippin (born 1960 at Redhill, Surrey) is an English artist. Pippin works with converted photographic equipment and kinetic sculptures.

His work shows a strong interest in the mechanical, which he has said stems from an early childhood memory of seeing his father surrounded by the wires and tubes of a television set he was repairing. Pippin's early work was based on converting furniture and everyday objects into makeshift pinhole cameras which he then uses to uses to take sympathetic photographs. This sounds simple but often involves a significant amount of planning to overcome the practical problems posed by the chosen object. Pippin typically has to plan and construct a significant amount of supporting equipment in order to achieve his pictures. Frequently the resulting photographs are distorted or otherwise compromised by the manner of their construction, but the imperfections are seen as an important characteristic of the image giving a link back to the object which was used as a camera. The photographs are always shown alongside an image of the converted object and later much of the equipment used in the conversion along with supporting documentation .

In 1999 Pippin was short listed for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in London. His entry was based on the work 'Laundromat – Locomotion' in which he converted a row of 12 washing machines in a laundromat into a series or cameras triggered by trip wires and then rode a horse through the laundromat to recreate Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion from 1878. Pippin's more recent work also includes kinetic sculptures.

Footnotes

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External links

• Mr Pippin - Steven Pippin official site
• Guardian special report (Oct 1999)
• SFMOMA exhibition (1998)