Born Basel, Switzerland.
Currently lives and works in Brisbane, Australia.

While growing up in Basel, Switzerland, the hometown of kinetic sculptor Jean Tinguely, Sandra Landolt developed a fascination for Tinguely’s playful, disruptive and mechanical inventions.

Upon moving to Sydney in 2001 and making a career change from physiotherapist to sculptor, I began to explore the concept of giving new functions to banal, discarded objects, breathing life into letterboxes, oil drums, suitcases and toy cars and powering them by simple mechanical devices.

The resulting kinetic sculptures are playful, poetic and socially engaged. A little boy dreams of flying while trapped inside a drum, a red car transforms its windscreen wipers into wings to hasten its escape; neither the boy nor the car ever get anywhere. They are fixated on a desire that will ultimately wear them down. Like all of my work’s they explore the idea that ‘failure’ implies dysfunctions whether of our own self-expectations or socially and culturally constructed expectations.

presented at Vol.06