HUNKIN, Tim

1950 - ?

Timothy Mark T. Hunkin was born at Hammersmith, London in December 1950, son of Oliver John Wellington Hunkin (7 April 1916-3 January 2011) and his wife Frances Elizabeth née Wilson (born June 1924), who married at Stratford-on-Avon in 1947. Tim studied engineering and graduated from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and then became a cartoonist, writer, and artist. Known for creating numerous public engineering works for institutions, chiefly for entertainment. Hunkin's works are distinctive, often recognisable by his unique style of papier-mâché sculpture, made from unpainted newsprint, his pen and ink cartoons, and his offbeat sense of humour and had an 'Observer' cartoon strip 'Rudiments of Wisdom' 1973-1987. Hunkin's 'Under the Pier Show' at Southwold Pier, is a penny arcade featuring several humorous, coin-operated machines. His Channel Four television series 'The Secret Life of Machines' included a mountain of flaming televisions; flying vacuum cleaners fitted with rocket motors; a carhenge; a ballet of self-propelled portable radios and a bizarre 'pilgrimage' of an internal combustion engine carried, shoulder high, on a bier into the centre of Carhenge. The Pink Floyd inflatable pig was also featured in the vacuum cleaner episode and his 'How to Cheat at Art' was the subject at one of his British Council lectures in 1997 and in 2013 he created a large, unfolding clock for the San Francisco Exploratorium. He has published several cartoonish books, his first was a children's book 'Mrs Gronkwonk and the Post Office Tower' (1973) others include 'Almost Everything There Is to Know' (1988) and 'The Rudiments of Wisdom'. He has lived Bulcamp, Southwold, Suffolk since 1976 and married in the Waveney district in 2004, Christina M. Amsden, when living at East Nook, Hall Road, Halesworth and later moved to Bulcamp House, Halesworth. His water-clock, originally designed for a Thames Water display on recycling is sculpted in galvanised steel and copper.
Website: https://www.timhunkin.com

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Works by This Artist