play collage

Subway

The Platform subway for my Play Pins exhibition on a Wednesday evening in September. A really interesting and public space to work with. And kind of large! So many boxes to fill - must say I freaked out a little...

Play Pins: Title box

The next installment from one half of The Playground Project, this exhibition takes a look at moments of adult play through design.

Over the past few years I’ve been keeping a record of moments of play in my life, in everyday situations I see and from stories I hear from others. The more I’ve thought about the ways that adults play, the more infinite these ways seem. Childhood, games, sport, sex, laughter, fantasy, ingenuity, creativity, risk, syncopation, repetition, rehearsal…the list goes on. My aim then, has become more about igniting the imagination of individual play.

For this exhibition I chose a number of images that signify the different ways I have observed adults play. An experiment in how clothing, textiles, image and object can sit playfully. It is not just a public display of playfulness, it is a reminder to notice and enjoy those bliss bits in your day.

How do you play? Is it sensation or scenario? Solitary or surrounded? The silver lining or the lining of a jacket? Play up. Play on. Play ball.

Play Pins: Photo wall

Tell you a secret...

Play Pins: PLAY ALONG

The air just starting to get warm.

Play Pins: PLAY AROUND

Queuing out front
you can hear the music,
feel your stomach,
hips start moving.
Can feel the pull
to get lost in rhythm.

Play Pins: PLAY OUT

The washing line hangs over the balcony. When the wind blows things off we fish them back with a fishing rod. It works surprisingly well.

Play Pins: PLAY OFF

Once there was a man at a conference. A very important man. Very important conference. But there was this hill. So green was the grass that he was compelled to roll down to the bottom. Brushing his knees off, he greeted his colleague.

Play Pins: PLAY FAST

Nothing beats good old fashioned adrenaline.

Play Pins: PLAY BACK

This girl I know really knows how to whistle.
I mean really. Every note. Plus the warbles.

Play Pins: PLAY DOWN

So I got in the bath with my clothes on to join you.

Play Pins: PLAY UP

I’ll tease you.
You’ll say no when you mean
yes.
I’ll please you.
You’ll be misty,
but alive.
I’ll see you.
Your eyes and mine.
The reaching.

Play Pins: PLAY WITH

That smile in the eyes. Come dance with me.

Play Pins: PLAY ON

We stopped on the stairs and sang the whole song together.

Play Pins: PLAY AT

Greeted, you enter a shallow room with a ceiling 2 levels high, on the walls are pictures of people playing, some obscured behind tiny sliding doors. Through a doorway, the next room is a 360 projection of an outside space (the sky, the grass, the beach) with a single chair in the centre. Another doorway and the room is getting smaller, a white space with many pens hanging, waiting for you to add your writing to the walls. As the spaces get smaller along the ramp, you pass through a sensory melange – textures and sounds – to ready you for play. The rooms end and you find yourself overlooking a large space in the round. The ramp you are on winds its way around the edge till it reaches a top centre stage where a band is playing. Along the ramp, people are climbing up and down poles/nets. Further on someone is being winched up by three people on stationary bikes. Under the centre platform are two long swings. To the side is a spiral staircase and a slide to the bottom level. There are four rooms underneath the spiral ramp, inhabited by performers – the dancing room (empty with a dress up box), the boudoire (a four-poster bed), the cardboard box (a card table and chairs) and the walk-in wardrobe (a single light globe with polaroids of people all over the walls). The centre area on the bottom level has a mound in one corner and a chequered dancing floor. There are hammocks and beanbags and old-fashioned chairs around the edges. From below you can see new people enter the space and winding around the ramp above you. You stay a while, a short performance happens in the central space. To exit you are led past the side of the swings and out into the night…

Platform Exhibition Opening

PLAY PINS - How do you play?

The next instalment from one half of The Playground Project, this exhibition takes a look at moments of adult play through design.

Over the past few years I’ve been keeping a record of moments of play in my life, in everyday situations I see and from stories I hear from others. The more I’ve thought about the ways that adults play, the more infinite these ways seem. Childhood, games, sport, sex, laughter, fantasy, ingenuity, creativity, risk, syncopation, repetition, rehearsal…the list goes on. My aim then, has become more about igniting the imagination of individual play.

For this exhibition I chose a number of images that signify the different ways I have observed adults play. An experiment in how clothing, textiles, image and object can sit playfully. It is not just a public display of playfulness, it is a reminder to notice and enjoy those bliss bits in your day.

How do you play? Is it sensation or scenario? Solitary or surrounded? The silver lining or the lining of a jacket? Play up. Play on. Play ball.

Program for Playground Open Studio

Photograph: Rachael Perry

PROGRAM FOR THE OPEN STUDIO GIVEN TO AUDIENCE
(we asked the people there to give us as much feedback as they liked - the program was just a little background of the project)

THE PLAYGROUND

Performance/Installation looking at the way adults play...
Play is escaping and imagining. No in-turned eyes on yourself. Appreciating the here and now.

To develop the performance aspects of Playground over the past two years Nancy has facilitated performers through physical theatre workshops. These sessions where about delving into the performers personal imagination and through the body exploring what play means to them. Nancy was aiming to find physicality that had a pure quality of Play.

The design of The Playground focuses on ways that objects, space, colour and costume can instil a sense of play in the participant. In its entirety, The Playground is an interactive installation. The recent development of the design element has focused on altering levels, depth of field, scale, frames/opacity and placing surprising objects together, as a way to promote imagination and play.

Music is an important element of Playground. We are fascinated by how it arouses performer and audience. We are curious about how music might assist an image. Music effects the imagination, emotions and reveals narrative meanings.

Past developments have also focused on how performers can guide audience towards taking part. But at this stage we want the audience to sit back and to observe the playful act. When the performer reveals the private is it exciting?

This open studio is the culmination of a one-week intensive development of The Playground project. It was aimed at exploring how a performer and designer can work side by side in a creative space.

OUR GOALS:

• Explore repetition through the relationship between movement and design
• To return to the basics of creating theatre; working with a set frame, creating narrative in space and designating where audience is seated.
• Performer: create 3 movement sequences that evoke Nancy’s personal sense of play.
• Designer: create 1 image (still or life) that captures play – analyse what elements are present
• Fuse the performance and design process: must incorporate the swing structure and popular music and the swing


Thanks to the Spark team, Bernard and the staff at Cubby’s, Strange Fruit, Fitzroy Town Hall, Paul Mognahan, Mark, Ben, Ness, Amy, Anita, Corey, Fraggle, Rachael and all those involved in the project so far!

Playground design 2005

This Playground design is a circular structure with a central tower (steps leading up on all sides). There is also a side climbing platform with a bridge across to the central stage. There is a swing and a seesaw around the edge of the space. A bed, a walk-in wardrobe, an oversized cardboard box with a card table and chairs and a dancing room with a dress up box form the sites that performers inhabit and return to.

PLAYGROUND OPEN STUDIO

I decided that lighting was to be the main way to affect the space. Some simple props were added. On the thurs night we had a play with lighting and the space came to life more at night – could really use the depth of field. This element made it worth using the playground. Was great to have some large structures – the swings – to create movement. And the mounds, the logs – to experiment with what you can and can’t see.

Photograph: Rachael Perry

PLAYGROUND OPEN STUDIO PROCESS 6

After the town hall, we were keen to somehow create a frame in this large outdoor space, and I ended up using 40m of black weed plastic and a staple gun to make a small, close-up space at the beginning, which was then opened up on one side to reveal the length of the playground. The trajectory of the performance then became moving from close to the audience to 5m away, to 15m away, to 30m away…. All we had to hope for was that the rain on Friday held off, which it thankfully did.

photograph: Amy Alexander