Minty Fresh Imaginary Perpetual Motion Machine.

Abject Gallery, Sunderland, 2025.

Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, 2026.​

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In this piece both the perpetual motion machine and roundabout serve as symbolic references to explore ideas of rumination, repeating cycles of human thought and the ability to exit a cycle, time, and speed of time changing.

 

A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical device that indefinitely operates without any energy input. It is an impossible machine as all systems lose energy through friction, air resistance or heat, meaning no machine can run forever without an external energy resource. ​Roundabouts serve as circular junctions for traffic to flow one way around a central island which improves traffic flow and safety.

 

The personified roundabout becomes a self spinning machine, aiming to combine ideas of the internal human thought machine, exhaustion as a by-product and the tension of being in and trying to exit a cycle. The fresco cheeks and eyes visually house a running figure and speed bump, whilst the mosaic roundabout has raised contours reminiscent of sweat droplets. Sweeney aims to model a human perpetual roundabout housing the ability to indefinitely process and exit rumination cycles, like a traffic system, like an impossible machine, in a minty fresh way.

 

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