‘The Bicycleur’ is a nod to the term Flâneur - a person who drifts around the city, letting the surroundings and encounters guide their journey. How would those routes translate to the perspective of a bicycle?
The Bicycleur explores the intertwined relationship between human and bicycle, transcending functionality to create a mode of movement, interaction and companionship. The bicycle evolves from a tool into a collaborator, influencing behaviour and thought with shared agency between rider and machine. As the bicycle affects the rider, how does the rider affect the bicycle? Questioning the limitations of cycling’s phenomenology confined to roads and paths, The Bicycleur proposes an abstract apparatus to transpose the experience into studio spaces, offices, and classrooms - a displacement that transforms perception.
A ‘Cycleur’, akin to the walking Flâneur, allows for subversive exploration and creates new forms of desire lines, navigating social structures and transforming our engagement with environments. The shape of The Bicycleur evokes a dog chasing its own tail, a loose knot, or a Möbius strip. Having navigated these concepts, The Bicycleur finds itself in a gallery, twisted and suspended by bungee cords, jiggling its way out of a knot.
The sculpture is currently tangled up in the cycling section of the Paul Smith store, Coal Drops Yard.