David Swift, who makes surreal toys, was the recipient of a Creative Scotland Award in 2004.  The lottery funded awards are made each year by the Scottish Arts Council to a group of artists to enable each one to realise their creative ideas in a major project.

For David his idea was to bring his carved and painted toys to life through digital animation in a film called ‘Nocturne in Sea Shark’.   Two years later the film, which is set in Sicily and Orkney, is complete and will be premiered at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney on 20 June 2006.  The film, which lasts 12 minutes, has involved 67 items, including an Italian palace, tigers and werewolves.

In parallel, a film using the same characters and sets has been made by children from three schools in Orkney, each school writing and filming a section of the story, and this will also premiere at the same event. 

‘Nocturne in Sea Shark: a tale of love, betrayal and ice-cream’ will be shown at the Glasgow Film Theatre in September, a festival in Palermo in Italy in November and at the Japan Toy Museum. 

The inspiration for the film grew out of research by David into puppetry and marionettes and this expertise has led to an invitation to talk to a group of Italian scientists about Japanese puppetry later this year.

David is also one of a group of makers being featured in the exhibition ‘The Face of Craft’ taking place at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh from 25 July to 28 August 2006.

David, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, has an international reputation as a maker of surreal toys.  Among the organisations he has undertaken commissions for are the Grand Theatre in Blackpool, Yorkhill Children’s Hospital in Glasgow, the Scottish Book Trust, Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and Japan Toy Museum.  He has exhibited in Munich and in 2002 held a solo exhibition at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh.

Explaining his work he writes:

‘I am haunted by an exhibit I chanced upon in a small but perfectly-formed museum in a remote orchard-filled valley in the Japanese Alps. In a display case overlooking an exquisite garden sits a wooden box, plain, almost austere which on closer inspection reveals itself to be a bunraku puppet maker's travelling tool kit. A set of half-open drawers contain tantalizing glimpses of beautiful oriental implements- themselves small masterpieces of functional design- and alongside are placed a series of serene mask-like carved heads fashioned out of local hinoki wood using just such a collection.

This box in many respects offers a vivid snapshot of my life at the moment. It speaks of a workshop delineated not by walls but by ideas and projects, and it also conveys a magical sense of creative interactions with people and places. In an eloquent way it highlights my enduring passion for the 'miniature' ( I love the story about Giacometti carrying around 2 years work in a matchbox!), as well as the immense pleasure that I derive from concocting cross-cultural mixtures - currently Japan meeting Italy meeting Scotland.’