Zoom Rockman – the young man behind the must-see exhibition of the summer

It’s impossible to miss the bold banner from the road as JW3 announces an exciting interactive summer exhibition from award-winning cartoonist and paper puppet animator Zoom Rockman. At 22, Zoom has created a series of 10 fully interactive, life-size portraits of Jewish icons in a variety of mind-boggling scenarios. These and all the workings that brought them to life are on display at Zoom Rockman’s Jewish Hall of Fame.

Zoom has been drawing since he was little, fuelled by the creativity that runs deep in his family. Both parents are designers, his great grandparents were painters and his younger brother Ace was named after their great, great uncle, who was a famous smudge photographer in Soho.

While working on his final piece at Central, William Galinsky, programming director at JW3, came to Zoom’s graduate show and invited him to showcase. “I decided to incorporate this chance meeting into the show’s concept with a comic strip – part of my 14th comic in 14 years.” A comical story involving some late-night cheese consumption (trust me, it makes sense) transports you into Zoom’s dreamscape featuring a Jewish hall of fame, showcasing 100 iconic Jewish faces hand-drawn to cartoon perfection. June Brown, who knew?

“I start with pencil and ink because I love the resistance of paper and then I colour in using an iPad as it gives more fluidity than pens. Bryan Cranston was a last-minute addition as he only recently found out his grandma was Jewish.”

After ‘falling through the portal’ (blame the cheese), you are met with 10 ‘automata portraits’ – moving mechanical art instillations of famous faces, all in unexpected roles narrated by their real voices, including Sacha Baron Cohen parting the Red Sea as Moses (naturally.)

The first encounter is with Dame Maureen Lipman, depicted as a fortunate teller with an accompanying comic strip to make sense of the madness. And for the superfans, yes, it mentions the ‘ology’. The weird and wonderful journey inside Zoom’s subconscious mind unfolds, taking us on a wild ride with characters spouting Yiddish galore, including Stephen Fry, Nigella Lawson and David Baddiel. Each portrait is hand-crafted using Zoom’s self-invented technique, a precise combination of illustrations and mechanics. Zoom says: “The work is an extension of my final piece at Central – I created the automata because I didn’t have enough hands to move all the different parts. Everyone I approached with my script storyboard was really supportive and happy to be involved, especially Stephen Fry who really hammed it up for his voiceover.”

Lord Sugar running a bagel shop and firing Zoom for his inefficiency at taking a customer’s order is a sight to behold. “It was pretty demoralising working on it, as I was fired over and over! But truthfully, Lord Sugar approved the concept immediately and it was the first one I worked on, with the exact blueprints on show, calculating by the millisecond how the multiple face layers should be moving. I’m enjoying learning about facial anatomy and even using the Latin names for authenticity.”

The only standalone piece is Amy Winehouse as a life-sized wooden moving puppet, with singing vocals. “I wanted an iconic British Jew from the music industry and Amy was perfect. The puppet incorporates ‘sympathetic movement’ – when you’re not puppeteering it directly, it reacts to how you move it. It’s really cool to see it scaled up from something that was just sat on my desk.”

In his downtime Zoom really enjoys sci-fi and samurai films. “I recently saw Interstellar and was amazed at how scientifically advanced it was. My favourite film though is Ran, directed by Akira Kurosawa who was also a painter – he painted the scenes before making the film and I love that you can pause the film at any moment and it could be a movie poster.”

Every creative has their preferred medium for noting down ideas but Zoom says he is too much of a perfectionist to carry a notepad. “If I mess up the first page of a sketchpad, I know I won’t want to hold on to it. I just pull pieces of paper from behind my desk and work like that. It’s a bit of a chaotic mess, but I’ve finally got a system going, categorising my ideas.”

Zoom’s future is certainly colourful. He is currently working on projects with hand puppetry and film, and the aim is to take the current Jewish Hall of Fame on the road. “I’d love to do Edinburgh Fringe and the dream is to take it to the States, because it features so many American Jews, such as Larry David – a personal favourite.” A Blues man, Zoom says he would also love to work his puppetry into a music video at some point.

And yes, Zoom is his real name.

Zoom Rockman’s Jewish Hall of Fame is at JW3 until 3 September. Tickets are £6. jw3.org.uk/zoom