National Fairground Archive

Miami Trip and the Next Generation of Fairground Art

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The 1980s - a Recap

As we saw from the first part of this article, the progressive dynamic of fairground art went through a 'phase change' in the 1980s. The traditional school of artwork was split in terms of how it functioned - traditional 'canvases' remained for a very ornate, although static, form of fairground art, with the continued success of rides such as Gallopers, or the need to decorate panels on round stalls. However, the more fluid end of traditional fairground art had to work with new themes using an old technique. Most of this work took place on the Arks and Waltzers - rides which were struggling to maintain the huge popularity they enjoyed up until the 1980s. A traditional approach to decorating an Ark or Waltzer would be a theme portrayed with a lettered front section - the words themselves being the main focus. The lettering would then be augmented with images or geometric patterns. The rest of the ride utilised a repeating pattern on the shutters and rounding boards - scrolls or imaginative interlocking shapes. Artists such as Pete Tei developed new 'worms' and shape systems, and introduced a more futuristic blend of metallic colours and effects. Figurative artwork on these rides was less common and often applied unsuccessfully.

Two patterns were developing that would later converge. Firstly there was a move towards faster and more intricate rides, as the fairground both renewed its own thrill factor and attempted to live up to the fast and futuristic rhetoric of the popular culture. It is easy to see this period as a 'dead zone' for fairground art, but it is perhaps better to think of fairground art in a more expansive construct - a fairground aesthetics that encompasses architecture, motion, effect, etc. A good example would be the Sizzler Twist, seen by many purists as the epitome of the death of fairground art. But previous to this mid-80s invention, the Twist had been decorated with a traditional approach of repeating patterns on the cars and handrails. The Sizzler was a statement of progression, an old ride updated to appear more slick and hi-tech. The public needed to be convinced that it was something wholly new and progressive, and painting it traditionally was not the answer. Instead, the designers went for a new aesthetic of massed lights, jagged and angular flash, ultra-functional colour schemes using black and another colour only, heavy emphasis on fibre glass and shimmering metal.

Secondly, a new form of artwork began to emerge, addressing the dominant cultural themes of the day (films such as Ghostbusters, Alien, Nightmare on Elm Street and Terminator, or Michael Jackson's film/music crossover 'Thriller') with a more narrative approach to design. Popular 1980s rides such as Matterhorns and Super Bobs, as well as the next generation of multiple deck Ghost Trains, were not suited to traditional styles of repeating patterns, and only worked with an explosive highly focussed narrative. For this to be expressed at its best the airbrush technique was required, and suddenly this form of artwork was catapulted into the foreground.

Eventually these patterns converged. The rapid development of hi-tech rides began to look towards airbrush art as something to complement its ultra modern aesthetic. By the 1990s airbrush art was appearing on many rides, but it wasnt quite holding the status it deserved. That was until the impact of the Miami...

100% Flash

The Miami can be truly described as 100% flash. The ride is a huge backflash with a single bench, and initially was only individualised through its expressive and dynamic artwork and themes. Its position on the sidegrounds also created another level of function - the rides were 'sounding boards' for up to date themes, enclosing the fairground and magnifying the attention back onto the crowd in the same way that the forward facing bench of seats fuses a bond between riders and spectators. The Miami was now mirroring the huge shows at the turn of the century, whose own intricate designs hepled 'trap' the feeling of elation and wondrous displacement that the fairground provides.

In turn the builders of the rides, and the showmen themselves, began to explore new themes of decoration and, more importantly, new artists. Innovators like Paul Wright had been painting side stuff, shows, and some larger rides (Albert Evans' Waltzer a famous example) for many years. It was only with the rise of the Miami that Paul gained the huge respect he deserves. Paul encompasses everything about a good airbrush artist working with a huge blank canvas. Unlike the traditionalists, he cannot resort to repeating designs to create a finished job. A good Miami artwork requires three stages of completion: the idea for the theme, its representation on the actual ride (use of shape, space, narrative, etc), and finally its technical execution. Each component of the process is equally important if the ride is to have the visual impact it requires. It took some of our own artists many years to knit together the three processes successfully, with some strange themes and even stranger artworks emerging along the way. But by the late 1990s the rest of Europe was taking a keen interest in the UK built and painted Miami.

Why Miami?

The name Miami stuck by pure coincidence - the KMG ride bought by Stephen Hill happened to bear that theme, and the rest is history. But another history tells us a deeper significance of the name, and gives us a first opening in categorising the myriad forms of Miami themes.

The cultural theme of Miami had already surfaced back in the 1960s with a 'Miami' Twist and the Miami Beach amusement park at Aberavon, so its connection to the fair is a deeper cultural link than the pure coincidence suggested by the 1990s phenomenom. The city of Miami has a shimmering multitude of portrayals within popular culture, underpinned by thoughts of sleaze, seduction, glamour and intense heat. The place exists as a playground for the rich, from both the USA and South America, with connotations of exiled dictators and flash-living gangsters punctuating any narrative. The image is one of blazing sunshine, wealth, glamourous clothes and cars, narcotics, and of course pumping music. Televison series fixed on the city (Miami Vice in the 80s and CSI Miami in recent years) portray the city in a highly stylised context, going to excess in all areas of representation, whilst the 'Miami Bass' sound has always persisted amongst other city-specific music scenes (Detroit, Chicago, etc). The Miami sound of course extends beyond sonic significations, through to its mode of operation - a portable sound played out by souped-up cars cruising the strips and beachfronts. This portable, bass-heavy sound continued through with the 'sound-clash' concept, lending itself to the fairground. A throbbing bass is experienced at gut level, lending itself to the gut level experiences created by the fairground ride itself - the bass, in effect, becomes a movement with the ride, meshing in and intensifying the experience.

Charlie Horne's DC Slater decorated Miami - a Paul Wright design with a Miami harbour-scene.

The theme Miami stuck with the ride, with innovative showmen and artists always managing to return to the concept and create something new. Stephen Hill purchased a new Miami from Nottingham UK in 2000 and a third machine in 2005 - both of these utilised explosive designs by Paul Wright with a seering Miami beach scene depicting glamourous women and lavish jewellry. Perhaps the most innovative of the Miami themed Miamis belongs to Billy Crow, a showman who is always respected for 'thinking outside of the box' when it comes to presenting a ride. Crow's 'Exposure' captures the frisson of the concept, with a gigolo-esque male figure in tight fitting leather trousers sprawled across the bonnet of a flash car - a bold attempt to move away from the ideally proportioned but ubiquitous disco-babes.

The Beach

The theme of the beach emerged from the Miami concept, but needs to be separated since its has its own trail of cultural implications, and it also generated its own school of artwork. Certainly, those artists who shied away from producing human faces and forms in their artworks were safer producing a huge backflash split between the yellow of the sand and the blue of the sea/sky, with a few dolphins or sunbathers to complete the picture.

Webb's early Emmett machine with artist unknown - most of the early Emmett artworks are now painted out.

Harry McFadden's Miami Surf - repainted but still retaining the surf scene.

Many of the Emmett rides utilised beach scenes, as did the Fairmatt and Eurofab rides, but Nottingham UK tended to dispatch with the concept, possibly because it started to look unimaginative (William Percival's 'Crazy Wave' being the exception). The Emmett machines were titled with an obvious reference to the 'big wave' motion of the ride - Mayne's 'Wipe Out' being a good example, but subtler ramifications of the beach lingered in other rides. Futuristic author J.G. Ballard had a profound interest in the beach as a kind of transitional zone for the human species. He studied human behaviour on the beach, and became fascinated by our own fascination to the beach - linking it to a desire to return to a former state of living as sea creatures with the beach figured as a marginal zone: 'I think the psychological role of the beach is more interesting. The tide-line is a particularly significant area, a penumbral zone that is both of the sea and above it, forever half-immersed in the great time-womb. If you accept the sea as an image of the unconscious, then this beachward urge might be seen as an attempt from the existential role of ordinary life and return to the universal time-sea'.

Other writers have suggested the fairground is another transitional zone for humans and human behaviour - a time and place to step outside of yourself and the norms of society - to let go and emerge yourself in rawer emotions. In this regard it is perhaps possible to consider Harry Jones' 'City Limits' Miami in this category - a strangely themed ride that (in its original decor) depicted a virtual world on the edges of society, but close enough to draw you in. The banner line read 'Better Than the Real Thing'. The ride has since been sold on and repainted, but it is interesting to note that Harry Jones' next Miami was the highly original and significant 'Hysteria' - another showmen, like Billy Crow, who is prepared to push the boundaries.

Terminator and the Decline of Civilisation

James Cameron's Terminator proved an influential film in many quarters, not least on the fairground. The original film stood apart as a classic piece of sci-fi noir, utilising a clever storyline, fast action, driving soundtrack (in the John Carpernter style) as well as hundreds of cool reference points - from the Nike hi-tops and raincoat, to the cleverly titled Tech-Noir nightclub that Sarah Connor seeks refuge in. The second film, T2, succeeded the first and managed to use a big budget without appearing obviously overblown. The strong influences from the film were appearing on the fairground throughout the 1990s, particularly on Matterhorns, but the film was well represented on Miami rides. The Terminator concept is part of a wider family of films that forecast the downfall of civilisation through a variety of consequences - dependence on 'intelligent' machines, ecological devastation, war and instability, etc. Miami rides have utilised the Terminator theme throughout the reign of all three films - the early Emmett Miamis were named after the film, though the artworks were more influenced by Paul Wright's groundbreaking Spritzer design and made no explicit visual references to the film. Dean Deakin's 1994 Fairmatt Miami proved to be the first actual reference to the film through its artwork - a montage of scenes from 'Terminator 2 - Judgement Day' - and the somewhat crude artwork was totally revamped by Paul Wright a few years later. Paul created 2 of the best Terminator themed Miamis for Nottingham UK in 2003 - machines for Elmer Bell and Dean Deakin (again) tied in with the third film in the Terminator franchise, with Bell's Miami utilising the highly appropriate advertising phrase for the film itself - "Rising Scream Machine".

Elmer Bell's superb Terminator - based on the third film.

Mad Max proved another popular choice for Miami owners, and this film belonged to the same dystopian strand as Terminator but proved less effective. For Mad Max the backdrop of city grime and ever present tension was replaced by the open desert of a post apocalyptic Australia, the film focussing on the hero Mel Gibson as more of an iconic biker style figure. For Terminator there is no discernible star, the film runs through tension and sheer cool.

Miami owners and artists developed their own genre of dystopian, apocalyptic backflashes. Crucial in this development was the second Emmett Miami delivered to Billy Crow. Crow's first machine was the second Miami off the Emmett production line, and went by the name of Spritzer - the artwork was in the standard vein of beach scenes by an artist unknown. The ride was quickly sold and the same year saw Billy Crow receive a second Spritzer (named after the exotic drink) - however this ride had a groundbreaking artwork by Paul Wright. The beach scene was replaced by a bleak future landscape as Paul began to define the methods in utilising the space of a backflash through clever arrangement and topology of figures. The artwork was flanked by 2 imposing figures in metallic head-dresses, a centre figure in close-up provided a main focus, and the background was filled with winged-humanoids descending from a dramatic storm-filled sky. This artwork was copied to a lesser standard on many of the early Emmett 'Terminator' Miamis, and the emaciated cityscapes and cyborgs became a standard feature on many of these rides.

Bell's first Terminator - a direct reference to Paul Wright's Spritzer design.

DeVey's Terminator - the banner line refers to the second film, but the artwork is again derived from Spritzer.

The Music Trip

The music scene has always been an influence on the fairground, however direct references to the music scene were proving difficult throughout the 1980s for reasons discussed in our article describing the rise of the Miami ride. Also, as stated, the Miami ride tapped into the growing dance music and rave scene throughout the 1990s, but not all early examples of the ride were directly referencing rave culture in their artwork. The rise of the 'super-club' and the huge corporate structure of clubbing was set to follow, and the later Miami artworks developed this imagery to an intense degree (see specific section below). The early Miami rides referenced music scenes in a variety of ways, creating an interesting bunch of artworks.

Fairmatt's second and sixth Miami rides (both 1992) were themed as 'Music Trip', a concept already in use in Europe. The name Music Trip makes a direct reference to the motion of the Miami - a sweep and swing through the music genres past and present. This concept of naming rides with reference to their motion was popular in Europe since the artworks were not generally good enough to define the ride in itself, however the UK Miamis quickly developed such strong artwork that the actual names of the rides stopped bearing relevence to the motion itself. But these two early Music Trips were both good examples by the artist Mark Gill. The layout of the artwork was a simple quartering of the last four decades with an exploding jukebox in the centre - the whole colour scheme being based on a deep red. The 60s was represented by Buddy Holly, the 70s by Jimi Hendrix and references to Tamla Motown, the 80s by a provocative Madonna flanked by 2-Tone imagery, and the 90s (even though the decade was only 2 years old) by Seal and KLF. Of course, both of these artists were quickly forgotten as the 90s became famous for 'faceless' dance music.

Cullen's Music Trip - spot the references to pop culture.

Many of the genres of Miami art crossed over into each other, and early references to music were based on the cityscapes developed with the Terminator Miamis (see above). Naturally these occured on Emmett machines with cyborgs replaced by dancing figures set against an often deserted city scene - these figures of people 'raving' preclipsed the actual rave scene, with early figures clad in more traditional clothing than the feather-bikini and foam brigades who emerged at the end of the 1990s. All of these artworks presented a strange juxtaposition - a hedonistic pursuit amidst the crumbling structures of modern society - decadence and excess at the edges and in the cracks.

Paybox from Rock City - the night-time city as playground...

Other early Emmett machines were themed with direct musical references - the rock'n'roll years were depicted on Shake It and Rock On, however, tellingly, both of these rides have been repainted with modern rave scenes, perhaps as the ownership of rides pass down from father to son? John Codona's Emmett built 'Rocker' provides a link between music themed Miamis and Americana (see section below), whilst early Fairmatt Miamis bridged a link between the beach and the dance with concepts such as 'La Bamba' or 'Caribbean Dancer'.

Paul Wright's repaint of Limbo Dancer - sun, sea and excess.

Shake-It referring to the 1950s - repainted in 2005 to reference the rave scene.

The only other notable theme to emerge (aside from rave music) was a brief celebration of 'brit pop' towards the end of the 1990s. Paul Wright produced artworks for both Harris' 'Scream' and Clark's 'Ultimate', whilst an earlier Miami ('Megadance') painted by Andi featured a huge spread of the Spice Girls.

Hard Rock and Americana

The emergence of Americana as a theme for Miamis was again borrowed from the European machines, and first featured on Keith Stanworth's Fairmatt ride in 1992. These early Mark Gill designs were all executed with a similar layout, the concepts just spead about across the canvas, images and phrases all in the mix. Both Yankee Flyer and John Simons' Yankee Trip (produced the following year) harked back to an almost mythical American culture - days of eagles, broad shoulders, Harley bikes and choppers, huge trucks and even huger centre-backs. Other Miamis tapped into the 'Hard Rock' concept - whereby clever franchising had created a chain of cafes supposedly frequented by movie stars such that you experience the 'reality' of idyllic American idealism - the 1950s and the era of the 'jumping joint' through to Bruce Springsten's clean living all conquering rock heroism. The Hard Rock influence persisted on the fairground for a few years, well beyond its limited sell by date, whilst other Miamis influenced American culture in a less bombastic fashion. A handful of rides referenced the 1950s era of film and music (Arthur Silcock's Reach for the Stars') whilst Roger Tuby's Emmett built ride depicted images from Hollywood. Harry McFadden took the decision to revisit this theme in 2004, giving the chance for Paul Wright to produce his only artwork (so far) that depicts American culture as an excess, but with the political climate as it stands it is interesting see whether this theme will be continued as a popular choice.

Simons' Yankee Trip - American mythology from all decades.

Tuby's Hollywood Sensation - lights, camera, action!

Paul Wright's work on Harry McFadden's American Trip - stars and stripes across Ireland.

Sports and the Extreme

The recent predeliction for extreme sports emerged at the tail-end of an agressive lifestyle marketing campaign whereby certain desireable lifestyles can be 'purchased' through appearance. The 1980s saw surfer styles available in the high streets such that it was possible to see fully fledged 'radical' surfers, many of whom had never dipped a toe in the sea, in some of the most land-locked cities. Other 'looks' canme later as a natural progression - skating, climbing, etc - only to be followed an actual rise in appreciation and participation of the sports themselves. This 'life imitating art' (or fashion) was partly stoked by a surplus of men's lifestyle magazines and an abundance of satellite TV channels reaching into the most specialist of interest domains. By the mid 1990s we were a nation obsessed with bungee jumping, extreme skateboarding, BASE jumping, skydiving, high-speed motor sports and a whole host of more obscure pursuits, right down to a recent fascination with 'extreme' stunts and behaviour inspired by a wave of 'Jackass' style TV broadcasts.

Miami owners initially plugged into this current, however the Miami artists took some time to get to grips with the subject. Outside of the surfing references previously discussed, early Miamis utilised a catchy name that linked with an extreme way of living, but initial artworks veered towards the standardised scenes of Americana outlined in the previous section. Both Perrin Mott's 1992 Fairmatt Miami 'Pure Adrenalin' and the only Freddy Mattia manufactured Miami (for Irish showman John Mohan) 'Live To Ride' featured biker lifestyle themes, even though the name of the ride expressed something more.

Pure Adrenalin - but the artwork sticks with Americana

Live To Ride - easy rider and the US style

Possibly the reason for the lack of adequate artworks boiled down to the challenge of creating something wholly new, and incorporating human figure work in to the design. These challenges, however, were not a problem for Paul Wright, and his work in the middle period for Nottingham UK began to establish new levels of perfection. William Wood's 1998 Miami 'Rollover' was titled after the experimental nature of using tipping 'pod cars' rather than a bench (a method soon abandoned), but Paul's artwork drew from extreme sports, particularly the 'rollover' associated with skydiving or vertical ramp rollerblading. Slowly a new level of expression began to emerge...

Extreme sports debut on William Wood's Rollover

Paul's next venture into this subject came with two his best early work's - the 2000 manufactured 'Drop Zone' for Alan Gillaine and 'Xtreme' for David Taylor. Both of these rides featured a cross-genre of artworks - branching out towards Paul's other themes of large sensual figure works from the rave scene and dynamic images from current films. These rides marked a new appreciation of the topology of the art, the space acting in a more narrative way, with detailed background blends of exploding colours and flame bursts. Xtreme is actually based around wrestling figures, a concept that was remarkably underused given the 1990s fascination for American wrestling - again a clever re-packaging of a tired concept.

Drop Zone - a class apart in terms of artwork...

...continued onto David Taylor's X-Treme

This confidence in using large scale human figures led paul to produce a variety of artworks featuring close details of climbers and other sports-people. His work on Gooch's 'Cliffhanger' (discussed in the section below) featured some incredible climbing scenes, whilst his revisiting of the surf theme for William Percival's 'Crazy Wave' showed his ability to detail body shape and skin tones. These were combined for Corrigan's 2001 Miami 'Extreme' - the first machine dedicated totally to all aspects of extreme sports. More recent works include DC Slater's art for Michael Stirling's 'Freefall' - this featuring self-referencing artwork such that the figures on the back-flash include screaming women on extreme fairground rides - and Gooch's 'Avalanche' - an original concept devoted entirely to alpine sports.

Whitewater rafting and mountain biking on Corrigan's Extreme

Fire, Ice and Dynamite - sub-zero activity on Gooch's Avalanche

Culture Spikes

Fairground art is known for its immediacy - grabbing and running with cultural themes as and when they are relevent. With an accelerated culture such as today this creates cultural anomalies and singularities, themes that date within a few years. Miami artwork is no exception, and this section can be split between specific themes from films outside of the highly influential Terminator, specific influences drawn from other media, and finally a few Miamis that have a deliberate theme but seemingly no concrete reference point.

Jim Carey's slickly animated Mask films spawned 2 Miami artworks by artist Matt in 1998, the film throwing up a batch of slogans ideally suitable for the Miami ride. The green and yellow colour themes made both of these rides vibrant and distinctive, though it is debateable how long they will survive without recourse to a modernisation of theme, even with a largely unnoticed third Mask film appearing in 2005.

Lets Rock This Joint - madcap behaviour on Wilkinson's Mask...

...while the film references the film - Do You Feel Lucky, Punk - on Dowse's Mask

As previously stated, Paul Wright produced an incredible artwork based on Cliffhanger, a high-octane mountain rescue drama with the musclebound Slyvester Stallone performing various solo and shirtless climbs amongst the snowy peaks. The film once again produces a great strap-line for the ride - Don't Look Down - and scenes from the movie are put together with the flow of space that Paul was developing at the time.

DON'T LOOK DOWN! - Cliffhanger's staggering artwork

Action movie figures had been incorporated into various artworks, though Stanley Thurston's 'Daredevil' provided the first Miami to be themed entirely on this concept. Again the ride represents a superior piece by Paul Wright. Other film dedicated Miamis include Noble's 'Indiana', Derek Codona's 'Lethal Weapon' and Brinley Gore's 'Mega Motion' - the latter featuring an array of movie references. The hugely successful X-Files series existed primarily on the TV, and featured on John Scarrott's Energiser, though the Energiser name also occured on other rides.

Daredevil works with many action movies - The Matrix included

Mega Motion draws from Indiana and Cliffhanger - both later used as indivual themes

The ubiquitous spread of computer games influenced a handful of Miami artworks, though increasingly the lines between game and film became blurred with movies for most of the major games emerging in the later years. John Murphy's 1998 Miami existed for many years without a name, but was marked by a strong Matt artwork based around various computer game heroes. In recent years the ride has been themed as 'The Edge' and has been repainted in the generic rave / dance music style (see next section). John Silcock had the honour of taking the first Nottingham UK Miami, and this featured a Matt artwork themed around Mortal Combat, reflecting the huge popularity in the fighting genre.

Playstation makes it large

John Silcock's Side Kick - before Kylie made the film version of Mortal Combat

From the Rave to the Future Dance

Dance music took a back seat in the early 1980s, with the UK still producing a fractured music scene following the post-punk fall-out. Synthesisers, drum machines and samplers were starting to emerge in the popular music scenes, creating a dynamic, bass-heavy and futuristic style that equipped itself well to the modern fairground. Music journalist Simon Reynolds documents the dynamic of the 1980s through his 2 books - 'Energy Flash' describes the origins of the rave scene from the late 1980s, whilst his more recent work 'Rip It Up and Start Again' documents the prolific experimentalism spurred by the post-punk and new-wave movements of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Reynolds manages to fix on an absent period, 1985/86, where one scene dies away and another is yet to emerge, and references to music cultural themes on the fairground were indeed difficult to come by in this period - with a few rides referencing the somewhat underground 'electro' scene.

The rave scene emerged from this two year musical wilderness, the youth of the country desparate for something fresh and exciting. Various scenes collided in the mix - the 'Balaeric' sound of sophisticated Londoners on holiday, the 'Acid House' of the educated underground seeking raw sound effects, the 'bleep' scene of Northern England with a sparse industrial dance music, and the 'baggy' scene fostered in Manchester clubs and on football terraces. It was a whirlwind phenomena - raves pounded through the night, extending into illegal spaces and permeating strange areas such as motorway service station car parks. The movement was obviously castigated in the media, not least for its connection to the rise of new drugs, but it was obvious that as a cultural force it would not go away. Gradually it began to be co-opted into the mainstream, at the same time evolving at an alarming rate with a music-specific diversity. New micro-genres emerged - hardcore, garage, jungle, drum and bass, breakbeat, big-beat, speed garage, etc. Of course the sounds from the scenes were quickly adopted on the fairground, but the actual imagery from the scenes took a while to take root. After a few years the airbrush artists decorating the Miamis began to converge on an agreed set of icons - club emblems from the likes of Cream and Ministry of Sound combined with scenes of hedonism from the dancefloor shot through with cascading lights and lasers. One possible reason for the late take-up of this theme is the need to get the glamour and details perfect - the artworks were seen solely through the blown up faces and twisting forms, and so everything needed to look just right.

Appleton's Hi-Energy - the UK's first rave-themed Miami

The first example of a rave music themed Miami occured in 1993 with Charles Appleton's 'Hi Energy' - artwork painted by Emmett's in-house artist Pat Doonan. The execution might have been rather crude (it was later repainted to a high standard by Matt), but the artwork included key references to an 'Energy Rush' and 'Trip'. Conscious of the fact that the theme did not quite work, it took a few more years for dedicated rave themed Miamis to take precedence - Booth and Studt's 1996 Emmett built machine included another experimental take by Matt, and a few repaints of Emmett machines followed suit. However, rave themes did not feature as a dominant choice until the mid-period of Nottingham UK's output (circa 1999), with artists Paul Wright and Matt proving more than capable of translating the required narrative, and attaining the desired effect and quality of finishing. The long wait proved worth it - both Matt's work on Henry Evans' 'Over-Rider' and Paul's work on Harry Jones' 'Hysteria' are landmark pieces of artwork. The sensuality and use of deep red and blue colour themes makes both of these rides stand out - the artworks resonating with highly-charged activity. Over-Rider is typically outrageous, the figures engaged in sleazy embraces, some looking out from the artwork, some totally oblivious - voyeurism translated on all levels. Hysteria is a different story - this brings to bear Paul Wright's sheer ability to create sweeping narratives and etch out intense attention to detail.

Watching you watching me... Matt's portrayal of extreme voyeurism on Evans' Over-Rider...

...versus Paul Wright's sublime clubland imagery on Jones' Hysteria

Hysteria marked a period of activity for Paul Wright as artist of choice for Nottingham UK. Throughout 2000 and most of 2001 Paul worked on some classic Miami artworks, tending to develop figurative aspects across various themes rather than focussing on dance and rave music as a specific. Ironically the next rave dedicated Miami came at a time of temporary (forced) retirement for Paul due to ill health. Robert Perks' 'Mega Dance' worked with a Paul Wright design but used artist DC Slater. The finished work proved to be one of DC's best efforts, with the theming caught between scenes of dancefloor delirium and DC's own preferred choice for glamour.

Perks' Mega-Dance provides a glimpse into artist DC Slater's vivid imagination

Subsequent Miami artworks were now split between DC and Dutch artist Wul, with a rave theme adopted as a standard. As expected, DC's works tended to veer towards female figures, whereas Wul's work represented a bolder spread of figures - DJs, freestyle dancers, suave cocktail drinkers... Wul produced works for Keith Stanworth (a mixture of pop and dance references), Roger Tuby (the innovatively shaped 'Disco Fever'), Denzil Danter and Joe Cullen - arguably Wul's best artwork during this short residency.

Stanworth's Remix sees Wul deliver a musical mix of themes...

...whilst his work for Cullens was probably his best so far

During this period Paul Wright's ideas were evident in the background, working as a design consultant for the artworks, sharpening up his computer graphics skills by developing software packages to pre-create an artwork (or series of possible artworks). Paul, however, returned to work at the end of 2002 with innovative artworks for both John Bugg ('Moondancer') and John Simons ('The Buzz'). Once again the bar had been raised as Paul created fresh designs and arrangements of figures, developing new colour schemes and forging new 'background elements' to cement the flow of narrative in the artwork. As well as working on other subjects, Paul continued the rave theme with works for Joe White ('Freestyle') and a second Miami for Henry Evans. As with Evans' previous artwork (the influential Over-Rider) this pushed the limits of figure work with another highly charged, hedonistic 'Ibiza foam party'.

Moondancer indicated the increased attention to detail developed at Nottingham UK

John Simons' 'The Buzz' followed, with a newly focussed Paul Wright design

The period instigated by these influential artworks created a flood of repaints based on rave themes. Dutch artists Wul and Swen were prevalent here, working a machine with incredible speed. Matt returned to work with a repaint for Bert Holland ('Chill Out'), and new artists began to push through (Darren Smallwood, Fraser Day, Tony Rae). However, 2004 opened with yet another incredible step forward by Paul Wright with Alan Gillaine's 'Future Dance'. For this work Paul utilised a more futuristic approach, despatching the customary 'blonde' rave figure, for a short-cropped, dark haired, strong female central figure surrounded by futuristic elements blending freestyle dancing and 'data shard' background elements. This was part in response to the changing music scenes - the heavily coporatised era of rave (superclubs brands established throughout the late 1990s) had started to create an inevitable backlash as youth culture searched for something less overtly packaged and more 'underground'. Electro-pop influences emerged once again, followed by a rock-dance crossover - these scenes starting to jostle for position as we progress through the first decade of the third millennium. Whether the rave theme has reached its limit is a tough question to call - by the end of 2005 it remained a popular (and obvious) choice for Miami owners and artists - the mix of exploding colours and glamour appealling to many sections of the crowd.

Future Dance signals a new era...?