Eduard Bersudsky's Kinemats

In the Crescent Arts Centre's dance studio, a towering skeletal assemblage of metal whirrs and groans. Titled The Time Of Rats, and so precisely welded together from old (working) sewing machines, typewriters and wind-up gramophones operated by somersaulting rats that its amusement value diverts from its savagely satirical intent, it is Russian sculptor Eduard Bersudsky's despondent response to perestroika. For the tower is balanced on the palanquin of a huge mole revolving, blindly, mindlessly while above it the rats who are, in the sculptor's eyes, the communist placemen who continue to run his country, grind on to little purpose - the musicians, the writers, the machinists as well as the bureaucrats of the old empire.Another piece, Head, savages the West's colonialism, another, Triangle, mocks both the church's asceticism and pleasure's principles. Bersudsky whose work can be described as Heath Robinson meets Bosch meets Gerald Scarfe, has an acerbic reputation in Glasgow where his Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre is based. His first presence in Belfast, this work, the inspiration for composer Brian Irvine's new composition Bersudsky's Machines, is a must-see.Runs till June 28th.