A new phenomenon is set to sweep the streets of the UK as the very first Art Car Parade takes to the road on Saturday 8th September.

Michael Trainor, Curator of Art Cars 2007 explains, “An Art Car is a drivable installation - any vehicle which has been re-imagined, re-styled, re-modelled, or completely metamorphosed by an artist.

Vehicles can be decorated, sculpted, adorned, illuminated or bejewelled to create “transports of delight” in the shape of cars, trucks, bikes, mobility scooters or even pedal or solar-powered contraptions!”

As one of 14 commissioned artists, The Treatment Rooms from Chiswick, are set to join around 25 other vehicles as they take the streets of Manchester by storm.

The Treatment Rooms consist of artists Baroness Von Reichardt and Mr Spunky. The name The Treatment Rooms, owes to the idea of art as therapy. A strong influence on their work is a continuing correspondence with inmates on Death Row. The Treatment Rooms have dedicated various works of mosaic art to inmates, with their Art Car dedicated to an inmate named Ash.

The Treatment Rooms is one of the artists from all over the country have been specially commissioned to transform vehicles into weird and wonderful mobile artworks to take part in the event: the first ever Art Car Parade to be produced in the UK.

For their Art Car, The Treatment Rooms have created ‘The Tiki Love Truck ’. A tiki is a large carved talisman of humanoid form, common to Polynesian cultures of the Pacific Ocean. The ‘Tiki Love Truck’ is a magical mosaic/ceramic adorned automobile, which will be driven by two lovely hula girls who give out messages of love and peace as they drive by.

Baroness von Reichardt says “I look forward to seeing the other ‘Art Cars’ at the parade in September and so far my own build has been enjoyable and not like real work and I’m pleased to be on the Art Car “bandwagon”.

The original concept to bring an Art Car Parade to the UK was conceived by Liz Pugh and John Wassell from Walk the Plank, one of the UK’s leading Arts organisations specialising in outdoor performance. Art Car Parades are a huge phenomenon in the USA, with the first, and by far the largest, in Houston with 250 Art Cars on show, attracting over 200,000 spectators annually. John saw that Parade in 1990 when working in Texas, and Liz saw some of the Art Cars at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada a few years later.

August 23, 2007