Swinging
in the gallery: art meets golf at Battersea Arts Centre
In an unexpected mashup, the worlds of contemporary art meet
the history of mini golf in this playful exhibition at Battersea Arts Centre.
Originating at RISING festival in Melbourne, it is an exhibition where visitors
are allowed to play the art, discovering feminist histories in the process.
Golf may not be the first activity you think of when looking
for intersections with contemporary art. It is, after all, one of the traddest
sports – the staid ‘fashion’, clichéd pastiche of the English Picturesque
landscape, and that it’s largely enjoyed by the kinds of stockbrokers and
businessmen one may not expect as gallerygoers or excited by the edges of progressive
culture.
An interactive exhibition at Battersea Arts Centre seeks to inject some critical ideas into that most orthodox of sports, using the scaled down version of Mini Golf as the vehicle. The participatory installation comprises nine installations, or holes, designed by artists, but even before such creative queering, the game of mini golf is already rooted in a radical, political past.
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It was created in 19th century Scotland by women who had been banned from playing traditional golf, men in control deeming it ‘unladylike’. Over a hundred women got together to form the St Andrews Ladies’ Putting Club and commission The Himalayas, an undulating 9-hole putting course that remains at the famous course to this day. Growing in popularity, similar courses cropped up across the UK and by 1912 the game of ‘Golfstacle’ had emerged, a version of the putting course but with tunnels, bridges, loops, and other inventive obstacles.
The craze spread across the world, with standardised models easily installed, including on over 150 New York rooftops by the late 1920s. Now, they are still found in a variety of places, from old-fashioned seaside resorts to trendy bars for city office workers. But it had not really crossed over into the art world until curator Grace Herbert developed Swingers, a project the RISING festival in Melbourne, then travelling to Brisbane Powerhouse before now coming to London – albeit losing it’s provocative title, now presented as the more sober The Art of Mini Golf.
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In recognition of its feminist roots, all the artists involved are women, including two British artists familiar to readers of recessed.space – Delaine Le Bas, who we met in a solo exhibition at Newcastle Contemporary (00276) and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley who turned FACT Liverpool into a cyberpunk playground (00078). There are also other artists including Miranda July, Saeborg, and Soda Jerk, each compressing their aesthetic, politics, and imagination into the mini golf format.
When arriving at the entrance of Battersea Arts Centre, visitors to the exhibition are first given a ball, club, and scorecard. The whole show is playable, though some are more gamified than others. Natasha Tontoy’s work sees visitors pass their ball through a red landscape of sculptures, the artist drawing from an elder female orangutan in film series The Planet of the Apes, carrying with it feminine wisdom and otherness.
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Australian film-making duo Soda Jerk puncture a large screen with a serpentine mini golf path. The film players go into then out of is an AI-induced hallucination of 90s-2000s digital media, from gold tutorials to drugged up Teletubbies, documentaries on the paranormal to classic films. The critique of capitalism, media, and gamification of culture is set to a twisted and weird soundtrack, making this one of the more unusual and creepy holes any golfer has faced.
Some artists change fundamentals of the game. Saeborg, a Japanese artist interested in biopolitics and gender identity, asks visitors to leave their club at the door, replacing it with an inflatable strap-on tail of their choice. Romani Gypsy artist Delaine Le Bas lets golfers use the club, but to hit a cubed ball instead of the somewhat easier sphere. The square ball is a paradox and unpredictable, inviting visitors to metaphorically experience the feeling of being an outsider, unwelcome, or excluded.
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Danielle Brathwaite Shirley completely abandons the golf entirely, asking players to abandon both club and ball, instead playing a new game of chance, interacting with sculptural objects in ways that then go on to impact later players’ experiences. Her work continues to interrogate the Black trans experience in confronting ways.
In a counter approach, Australian indigenous artist Kaylene Whiskey plays the golf dead-straight, her work is a sculptural arrangement that does not interfere with the golfing route players take. The works references a journey through the artist’s home territories.
It’s an interesting premise for an exhibition, to create works that require playful participation. It’s also valuable to rekindle the feminist and fascinating history of mini golf for a new generation. Not all of the works seek to engage with the form, practice, or histories, and in some case the golfing conceit is completely ignored, which seems a shame for something so unique in curation.
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That said, it’s always welcome to see such an unexpected mashup in contemporary art, especially one which leads the visitor through the upper rooms of Battersea Art Centre, so wonderfully rescued from the ashes by Haworth Tompkins architects. It is definitely more of a sculpture show than a competitive game, though there’s something refreshing about having no “do not touch the art” signs and instead being invited to swing at it.
An interactive exhibition at Battersea Arts Centre seeks to inject some critical ideas into that most orthodox of sports, using the scaled down version of Mini Golf as the vehicle. The participatory installation comprises nine installations, or holes, designed by artists, but even before such creative queering, the game of mini golf is already rooted in a radical, political past.
It was created in 19th century Scotland by women who had been banned from playing traditional golf, men in control deeming it ‘unladylike’. Over a hundred women got together to form the St Andrews Ladies’ Putting Club and commission The Himalayas, an undulating 9-hole putting course that remains at the famous course to this day. Growing in popularity, similar courses cropped up across the UK and by 1912 the game of ‘Golfstacle’ had emerged, a version of the putting course but with tunnels, bridges, loops, and other inventive obstacles.
The craze spread across the world, with standardised models easily installed, including on over 150 New York rooftops by the late 1920s. Now, they are still found in a variety of places, from old-fashioned seaside resorts to trendy bars for city office workers. But it had not really crossed over into the art world until curator Grace Herbert developed Swingers, a project the RISING festival in Melbourne, then travelling to Brisbane Powerhouse before now coming to London – albeit losing it’s provocative title, now presented as the more sober The Art of Mini Golf.
In recognition of its feminist roots, all the artists involved are women, including two British artists familiar to readers of recessed.space – Delaine Le Bas, who we met in a solo exhibition at Newcastle Contemporary (00276) and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley who turned FACT Liverpool into a cyberpunk playground (00078). There are also other artists including Miranda July, Saeborg, and Soda Jerk, each compressing their aesthetic, politics, and imagination into the mini golf format.
When arriving at the entrance of Battersea Arts Centre, visitors to the exhibition are first given a ball, club, and scorecard. The whole show is playable, though some are more gamified than others. Natasha Tontoy’s work sees visitors pass their ball through a red landscape of sculptures, the artist drawing from an elder female orangutan in film series The Planet of the Apes, carrying with it feminine wisdom and otherness.
Australian film-making duo Soda Jerk puncture a large screen with a serpentine mini golf path. The film players go into then out of is an AI-induced hallucination of 90s-2000s digital media, from gold tutorials to drugged up Teletubbies, documentaries on the paranormal to classic films. The critique of capitalism, media, and gamification of culture is set to a twisted and weird soundtrack, making this one of the more unusual and creepy holes any golfer has faced.
Some artists change fundamentals of the game. Saeborg, a Japanese artist interested in biopolitics and gender identity, asks visitors to leave their club at the door, replacing it with an inflatable strap-on tail of their choice. Romani Gypsy artist Delaine Le Bas lets golfers use the club, but to hit a cubed ball instead of the somewhat easier sphere. The square ball is a paradox and unpredictable, inviting visitors to metaphorically experience the feeling of being an outsider, unwelcome, or excluded.
Danielle Brathwaite Shirley completely abandons the golf entirely, asking players to abandon both club and ball, instead playing a new game of chance, interacting with sculptural objects in ways that then go on to impact later players’ experiences. Her work continues to interrogate the Black trans experience in confronting ways.
In a counter approach, Australian indigenous artist Kaylene Whiskey plays the golf dead-straight, her work is a sculptural arrangement that does not interfere with the golfing route players take. The works references a journey through the artist’s home territories.
It’s an interesting premise for an exhibition, to create works that require playful participation. It’s also valuable to rekindle the feminist and fascinating history of mini golf for a new generation. Not all of the works seek to engage with the form, practice, or histories, and in some case the golfing conceit is completely ignored, which seems a shame for something so unique in curation.
That said, it’s always welcome to see such an unexpected mashup in contemporary art, especially one which leads the visitor through the upper rooms of Battersea Art Centre, so wonderfully rescued from the ashes by Haworth Tompkins architects. It is definitely more of a sculpture show than a competitive game, though there’s something refreshing about having no “do not touch the art” signs and instead being invited to swing at it.
