Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery
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The Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery is a theatre of kinetic sculpture, where hundreds of carved figures and pieces of old scrap perform an incredible choreography to haunting music and synchronised light, telling the funny and tragic stories of the human spirit as it struggles against the relentless circles of life and death. Its style has been described as “Heath Robinson meets Hieronymus Bosch”.
Sharmanka was founded by the sculptor-mechanic Eduard Bersudsky and the theatre director Tatyana Jakovskaya, in St Petersburg in 1988 and based in Glasgow since 1995. It was exhibited at Edinburgh Royal Museum, London Theatre Museum, Manchester City Art Gallery, McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, Museum Van Speelklok tot Pierement, Utrecht, as well as at science and technology museums in Jerusalem, Switzerland and Copenhagen. The smaller version, “Sharmanka Travelling Circus”, tours UK since 2005.
Commissions include The Millennium Clock for Royal Museum (in cooperation with Tim Stead and others) in Edinburgh, “The Flight” for Bloomfield Science Museum, Jerusalem, "St.Mungo-at-the-Tron" in Glasgow, “World of Artist” for Storm P. Museum, Copenhagen etc.
Sharmanka kinetic sculptures are in collections of Glasgow Museums and Museum of Nonconformist Art in St Petersburg
Eduard Bersudsky won “Creative Scotland Award” in 2005
The word "sharmanka" (шарманка) is Russian for hurdy-gurdy or barrel-organ.
