Here are two conversations Joe had about the show with Letmiya Sztalryd, the director of the documentary "I am a Mutoid", and Marcus Downe, a writer and artist. 

 

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"SCRAP OF GOLD", a conversation with Letmiya Sztalryd

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I love the breakers’ yards. This is where I go to find “my accidents”. It's a treasure trove, gold from scrap. Scrap of Gold.

The mechanical parts found in the scrap pile were originally designed for function, not aesthetics. But, when stripped of their purpose and isolated, they reveal extraordinary, eccentric shapes.

Windings of copper wire can resemble plant stamen or the body of a bee. Yet the aesthetics of these parts are entirely accidental.

When I built Carhenge, Stonehenge made from cars at Glastonbury, I had to remove the internals of the vintage cars to impale them. This left me with my own scrap pile. Within this chaotic mass of shapes, I began to see forms reminiscent of fauna and flora, of insects and growing plants. Comparing the anatomies of the mechanical and organic worlds became the inspiration for this body of work.

 

THE HANGING BEE

 

A particularly striking image inspired the sculpture of the hanging bee.
When I began as an artist in the late seventies, I lived in a house called the Apocalypse Hotel, on a squatted street overlooking two breakers’ yards. Cars were demolished in a primitive way: a big hook attached to the front bumper would lift the car from an old crane. Then, using a gas cutting axe, they would chop the engine mountings. Radiator pipes burst, oil dripped down, and then the engine, gearbox, and axle crashed to the ground. The scene reminded me of footage from a whaling ship in the North Atlantic, where a whale was hooked, split open, blood dripping, and its organs dropped to the deck. The hanging car resembled the hanging whale, and the dismantling methods were strikingly similar.

In both cases, the parts went off to be used. 

 

 

SCRAP GODS

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It's an unusual way to see a car - an engine displayed vertically, the tip of the gearbox pointing downwards.

Engines are usually horizontal or enclosed in the body of a car. I noticed how the engine, with its head and cylinders, springs, valves, tap, and carburettor, resembled a chest and rib cage, organic forms. It was a beautiful sculptural piece. 

So, for “Unnatural”, I decided to stand the entire engine on the very tip of its gearbox, upright, to create a sculptural figure. From there, I began adding elements of different animals : a bird’s head, butterfly wings, or a horse’s head.  

They appear as totemic figures, scrap gods, yet they are also prayers for the survival of biodiversity on our planet - creatures, insects, birds, mammals, fauna and flora whose existence is increasingly under threat.

 

THE END OF THE ROAD

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The vintage cars I work with have sometimes travelled half a million miles. They’ve gone from state-of-the-art swanky new machines to worn metal relics. Throughout their lives, cars fight gravity, that’s the job of their mechanical parts.

Eventually, like all animated things subject to time, they reach the end of the road. Along the way, they acquire knocks, bumps, scratches and patinas. The memory of their lives. I value those marks and try to preserve them. In humans we call this character; in machines it is much the same. Scars and scratches tell a story.

The pieces I use, like engines, dictate a certain brutality. They were never designed to please aesthetically;

if they do, it’s accidental. Their design is purely functional. That’s why I avoid turning them into soft, pleasing objects. Cleaning, polishing or removing the edges would strip away their essence, reducing them to lifeless, decorative pieces.

I aim to remove as little as possible, keeping some dirt, rust, and oil to preserve their rawness.

Dirt is natural; it's cleanliness that's unnatural. It signals a widening of the distance between us and the natural world, including the part of it we inhabit ourselves. We are becoming spectators in an artificial world played out on screens, our sense of participation diminished. Meanwhile, a mass extinction is unfolding quietly - birds, insects, fauna, flora and eventually us. It’s a crime against nature and ourselves. We depend on biodiversity, whether we acknowledge it or not.

To break from nature, from our physicality, and our connection to the planet is unnatural. We are natural creatures; this is the point we seem determined to forget.

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THERMIC RUNAWAY

There is a mechanical analogy. As an engine ages, it can no longer retain oil. Gaps widen, oil escapes, heat builds,

and the thinning oil accelerates the process. Eventually, the engine overheats; steam pours out, oil drips onto the road and the engine is finished. The world now appears to be in a similar state of thermic runaway.

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VISIONS, COMPARED ANATOMIES AND MUTATIONS

I played with toys differently than other kids. I ignored instructions, built them, then chopped them up to invent new vehicles and creatures. That spirit remains in my work. When I was a kid, every village had dumps where people discarded all sorts of things. I found more joy in digging through old items than in toys made to entertain me.  

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My creative process of transmutation began with “Joe Exile”, the first sculpture in my style and, in many ways, a self-portrait. At one point, looking at my broken-down motorbike, I saw a horse, and realised the motorcycle rider was an evolution of the cavalier.

That thought led me to the centaur, the mythical fusion of man and horse. I responded by creating a man growing out of a motorbike, an unnatural figure composed of motorcycle parts, extending the feeling of the machine.

Mutating mechanical parts into creatures inhabiting an unnatural world became central to my work. The result is a kind of “Unnatural History Museum”. I’ve always loved the Natural History Museum, with its fossils, bones, plumage and insects. Nature's extraordinary creativity has always fascinated me.

Spend time there, and you see that a skeleton is a universal mechanism morphed in diverse ways for different functions, but with always the same basic structure: backbone, rib cage, lungs, hips, fingernails, joints. 

The skeleton mutates, but the technology is the same, an adaptive mechanical design. Animals have built-in tools.  

I think of the spoonbill, a bird with a specialised beak, perfect for digging and catching prey. Humans are less specialised, but our hands with opposing thumbs allow us to create tools. If I sculpted a version of that bird, I’d use a tool shaped like its beak. The form follows function in both cases - mechanical and organic. That’s the analogy I see.  

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THE VIRTUE OF THE ACCIDENT

I don’t feel the need to represent sculpture figuratively or in detail. I focus on the essence of my subjects. And I keep away from symmetry.  It’s easy to make a sculpture symmetrical, especially with mechanical parts. They look balanced and are pleasing but symmetry is the poor man's balance.

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My creative process begins and ends with observation.
For example, a small drill might resemble a dog’s head. You can imagine its breed and character, then search for parts to create its ears. The dog might be begging, scratching, or urinating on a tree.  You pursue the idea in your mind, but it’s crucial to keep observing.  If you only manufacture what’s in your head, you’ll achieve something close to your vision,

but not more. If you keep observing, you might see something entirely different, perhaps a little figure with strange arms. 

Follow that thread; it’s alive, unique, independent of your initial thought.  It may lead you astray, but eventually, you’ll return to it and connect it with another half-built piece.

 A sculpture born of accident is unique and independent. The accident must be pursued. Otherwise, artists produce only what they can already imagine. And that's boring.

 

My work shares something with Picasso's bull's head, where a bicycle seat and handlebars are combined through a recognition of their inherent connection, thereby creating a new form. That same logic underpins my own work.

As a sculptor, developing your own style is a series of decisions, often only apparent to yourself. Each work leads to new thoughts and processes, sustaining you as an artist. Fundamentally, you need good technique and understanding, because they create the conditions for experimentation and give you creative freedom. 

Develop skill and practice, then you can follow your creative trail, not knowing where it leads or if it will ever buy you breakfast. You follow it because you feel it, experiment, and eventually, you might add something that changes how people do things. 

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When asked to write about Joe Rush, it's a huge temptation to indulge in an overcaffinated, baroque, word salad of adjectives, trying to capture both the physicality and unearthliness of his creations -but whats the point of that when I can just show you the pictures?

What I need to show you, is what you can't see. The equally wild world inside his head.

So here's Joe, in his own words:

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-as told to Marcus Downe.

February 2026

 

 

 

When I started out with the Mutoid Waste Company, I was trying to inspire people with the beauty and possibilities of scrap, to encourage recycling. I was also keenly interested in natural history and observing the natural world. 

 

My love of nature was informing these sculptures. Seeing the compared anatomy between machines and living things. For everything we’ve built, there is always a better version already in nature. 

 

 

In a similar way, the incredible precision and detail in a discarded crank shaft adds a lifelike complexity and realism to anything I could imagine making. 

Evolution doesn’t re-invent from scratch; it builds on what already exists.

 

Some of the components I use have driven 500,000 miles. They’ve taken on elements and character from their experience of the world. I’m careful to only superficially clean them to retain this character.

I don’t like to use plastic, it has already had another artist’s hand in there rather than pure functionality. I prefer old metal, discovering the accidental beauty of a meticulously machined bit of carbonised steel when I remove it from its original context.

 

 

To create forms that feel natural, I have to capture just the essence of creatures, not slavishly emulate any specific species. I’ve given myself the freedom to not identify it, to leave the viewer some room for involvement. Going back a step and keeping yourself out of the way. 

Taking myself out of it allows me to tap into some fundamental impulse, like everything else on this planet. Perhaps I’m only picking up a small signal from it, but a line

 of creative evolution runs through everything. 

 

You only have to observe the perfect way insects interact symbiotically with certain plants or how tendrils on a pea grow towards something they can hold onto -it just gives the game away.

To assume that evolution is just successful accidents is like thinking a hurricane could blow through a scrapyard and build a Boeing 747.

 

Stylising these forms distils them down to totems. I don’t want to just ransack anthropology and biology for new shapes, I’m trying to imbue my artworks with a spirituality, an appreciation and an obligation to the natural world.

Like religious icons, they have a sense of devotion to the things they represent.

 

This is what I’m trying to express, but to make them work as sculptures I need them to have equilibrium and balance. I like to say: ‘Symmetry’ is a poor mans ‘Balance’.

A symmetrical face is often pretty, but only a balanced face can have real beauty.

Although many living things are broadly symmetrical, they also move. 

I think that’s why a balanced asymmetry is so important in sculpture, it gives it the possibility of being alive.

 

I’ve also developed a new technique for some of the work, specifically for this show. 

I’m making ‘Anthropocene Fossils’ out of bike chains and tool parts. 

A fossil is a naturally occurring copy of a bone, cast in sediment. 

Mine are cast in plaster of Paris, much like the exhibits in natural history museums.

 

I don’t think the vision of the artist has changed since cave painting. 

They know the animals around them and they know their materials, usually whatever they find around them. 

That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m picking up these discarded materials and 

removing them from their original function to discover an unintended aesthetic quality. 

Everything about a plant or animal is totally functional but accidentally beautiful.

 

While some people are glad there’s fewer insects splattered on their windscreens and radiator grills, it disturbs me to see less life buzzing and flapping and humming. 

We need them, but we are behaving in a way so contrary to the nature of the planet. 

The more I look, the more I become aware of what’s happening to the natural world.

I want to share these feelings and express them though my work.

 

By using these man-made waste materials I’m questioning ‘are we natural?’ 

 

 

An Unnatural History Museum.

The future archaeology of the Anthropocene Era.