British artist, born at Catford, London. After leaving school aged thirteen, he worked at a variety of jobs. He took up painting while in hospital suffering from tuberculosis, 1947–8, then studied at Hornsey College of Art, 1948–51, and the *Royal College of Art, 1951–4. ‘Within a year of leaving it had all gone…All I could do was sit in my little attic studio and play with the sunlight’; he stopped painting, and turned to the world of entertainment, working as a knife-thrower among other things. Then in 1962 he began making *environments and the works for which he is best known—witty animated robots, ingeniously constructed of all manner of debris (Boy Oh Boy, Am I Living, 1964, Tate). These were brought together in an exhibition at the Marlborough New London Gallery in 1965.