About Us

Welcome to Robot Circus, an artist studio Run by James & Pauline Farrar, an award winning photographer and trained goldsmith respectively.

Artist in isolation

I call myself an artist in isolation but what does that mean?

What do people think of when they imagine an artist in isolation?

Artists are meant to be in isolation, aren’t they? Isn’t that our preferred state? Artists like Frida Kahlo or Georgia O’Keefe famously shut themselves away from society to work. Van Gogh fled from the grey streets of Paris to be alone in the south of France with sunlight and colours.

But that is temporary self-inflicted isolation. And the purpose was to create a body of work to show people.

Then there is the isolation we all experienced during Covid. Isolation to protect health.

And indeed, that is true for me. I have spent the best part of my adult life in isolation due to ill health.

All the same you may be surprised to hear, I found lockdown liberating. For two reasons; firstly, everyone joined me indoors, but more significantly since Covid I felt able to talk about my illness.

Daily news reports and nightly debriefings meant as a nation we became obsessed with viruses. Up until then, I had only told my story to a handful of doctors, and for the first time, I felt able to tell others what had happened to me.

My journey began back in 1987 when I was bitten by a mosquito in my early 20’s on honeymoon in Thailand. The resulting fever nearly killed me. On my return to the UK, I was isolated for weeks in the tropical disease unit at St Pancras with Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever. 

I was placed in isolation and the doctors and nurses wore PPE for their own protection. After several weeks, when I came out there was indeed clapping. But back in 1987 the terms ICU and PPE were not commonplace. Today’s expression of Long Covid didn’t exist and post viral fatigue had just entered the lexicon.

The morning after I was discharged from St Pancras, I woke up paralysed. I was sent to the Atkinson Morley neurological hospital. I was isolated for 8 weeks, this time for my safety. I was further diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome; a life-threatening post-viral syndrome. I was only one of four people in the UK to be diagnosed. Since then, I have been confined to a wheelchair with my feet and hands partially paralysed. Additionally, a migraine sufferer.

Before I became ill, I was a goldsmith. I left home at 16 to be a jewellery apprentice under Norman Cherry, master silversmith. Three years later I moved to London to work in Hatton Garden and study gemmology at the Slade School of Art. 

By the age of 22 I had created a range of jewellery that was selling out at Liberty’s of London. I ran a busy workshop and thrived as head of a team. My mum used to say that if I was left alone in a room with 10 men, when you came back in half an hour, they would all be working.

My diagnosis was so uncommon, it was hard for family and friends to understand, and for many of my colleagues to believe. Part of my isolation was that people stopped talking to me because they couldn’t understand my diagnosis. When my husband gave up work to look after me, many people stopped talking to me altogether. 

At times it felt as though my very integrity was being questioned. As a result, I stopped talking about my illness to anyone. When asked how I am, I always reply, ‘you know.’

November 25th, 2015 was the day that changed everything. 

I had a heart attack. For 30 years my life had been plagued with migraines, but miraculously, the medication for my heart condition had a wonderful side effect - the disappearance of the migraines.

Since then, the art that has lay dormant inside has burst out.

Like a severed phone line, I had been cut off from society - I used art to reconnect.

To tackle the isolation pragmatically, I designed a garden on my doorstep that I hoped would be enough to get people to stop and talk to me.

The garden took a year to plan. Succulents were the obvious choice as they need little work and not much water. But how to plant them in a way to make people talk to me. Then it came to me.

A year before my mum died, the house had been filled with her possessions. I decided to plant a series of household objects, mum’s 1970’s Parker Knoll chair, lampshade, breadbin, shoes, washboard and cast-iron baths, teapots, crockery, even a rusty old bike. I filled each item with soil before planting succulents.

After enthusiasm came self-doubt. I hesitated before putting her chair outside. Nervous that my new idea would not go down well, I planted a pair of my husband’s walking boots first and sat by the window to listen.

Buoyed up by the laughter, it was full steam ahead.

My succulent garden became the talking point of the neighbourhood. People made detours from their daily routine to ask what I had planted next. Cactus House Edinburgh has become one of Edinburgh’s most Instagrammed locations.

In the Queen’s Jubilee year, my Throne of Succulents was chosen to appear on the TV show ‘Grayson Perry’s Art Club’.

The throne was displayed at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham through 2022-23. It was the first time any piece of mine has been shown in a gallery. Well, I never actually never made it through the door - it was displayed outside.

But MAC more than made up for it. In 2024 I was asked back to be Artist in Residence.

I completed two exciting projects in that time:

Talking Points 

Talking Points was a stall designed to resemble a barrow from the lane sales in the old Birmingham markets. I worked with my tribe, ladies from Making it Together, an art group for women who are isolated for different reasons. They each painted a pair of their own shoes then planted them with succulents to appear on the stall. From a pile of discarded everyday objects I created two robots - Ozzy Osbourne and Freddie Mercury - to sit beside the shoes. The point was to share with people in isolation how I use art to create so many talking points it can help to start conversations. 

Celebrity Robot Hunt

Following on from the success of making art to start conversations I created 23 robots from everyday domestic items. The idea was to use my goldsmith skills to cleverly put objects together that everyone would recognise and hopefully make connections. 

Each visitor was given a hand-drawn map, asking simple questions relating to each robot, and on completion there was a prize - a robot bracelet.

From July to October more than three and a half thousand maps and robot bracelets were handed out.

What next, I hear you ask?

It gets better.

Projects for 2025-2026:

The Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh

A Garden Designed for Chronic Pain Sufferers.

I have become well known enough to be asked to create an outdoor space for people like me in chronic pain.

Having been disabled since my early twenties, I have become increasingly unfulfilled with my experience of being outside. The reality for me is when I go out, I’m already in pain so I feel every bump on the road. I must be careful in the wind; the lack of shade hurts my eyes, and I am always cold and battling fatigue. I return home in a worse condition than when I left, and it takes days to recover. It has become easier to stay indoors. But I miss the special connection I have with nature. I long for a garden that is so immersive that just for a moment I forget how much pain I am in.

Raoul Curtis-Machin Director of Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh read my story and listened to my ideas. He spoke to his colleagues and after some thought suggested the Conifer Grove. 

Mr Curtis-Machin asked for a brief, as though it were my own land.

I have thought about the garden with three people in mind, a disabled child, an unhappy teenager, and an old person who really ought to be using a wheelchair but insists on walking, slowly.

So, with that in mind my husband and I spent Boxing Day morning in the Conifer Grove. My husband has returned many times since using a live video link, which is one of the ways we work together.

On the 6th of January 2025 I submitted my plans to The Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh. In February I met with the deputy curator and head of visitor experience to walk through the grove and discuss some possibilities. My ideas for pods and seats were passed onto the HND garden students working at the Botanics. I am looking forward to seeing their drawings based on my suggestions. 

I will keep you updated.