MINI GOLF – A SOCIAL PRACTICE (LOOK WHAT I MADE!)



Last week July 6 and 7, I was honoured to be a part of the exhibition opening for ‘Common Ground’ at Cambridge Galleries.  I am one of 9 artists curated by Iga Janik, invited to develop an artist interpretation of a mini-golf course in various non-spaces throughout Cambridge, Ontario.

Although I have worked on installations and group public sculptures in the past with the YPF, I have never designed anything sculptural on my own – this is my first experience of single handedly figuring out a concept in three dimensions!  It was really daunting when it came down to the engineering and material logistics of the ramp… as a painter I never have to consider an oil on canvas supporting human weight…. Anyway, I worked real hard and I’m glad everything works.  However, if it weren’t for my brother Chris, who built the entire structure for me, I don’t know what I would have done.  I owe my bro bigtime.

The aim of my ramp is to celebrate the intrinsically quaint artifice of mini-golf.  I wanted to use it to address issues of agency, the politics of otherness and the reclamation of clichés.  I designed a miniature island, inspired by the step forms of pyramids and ziggurats.  The structure features the reproduction of a mural drawing I made entitled ‘Projections of Idealism: Props to Tahitian Kids and Henry Darger’.  I wanted this island to be bright and beautifully synthetic, as one big stereotype, yet sincere, with plastic flowers contrasting the romantic images of charcoal on paper.  Plastic flowers are an attempt at resisting death, and my drawing of the Tahitian kids was my attempt to resist the exoticism of Paul Gauguin.  All with a grain of salt!  As a spiral golf ramp, one could either start at the bottom and hit the ball up the ramp, or begin at the top to allow the ball to roll down.  My feminine composition, double dong ramp is also a conversation about the Freudian machismo fantasy of golf- of getting it into the holes…

If you can, please check out the show and tell me what you think.  The exhibition will run until September 30, 2012.  Here is a link to Common ground, and a review of the exhibition on Canadian Art.