27.03.2024 | States of play
ERITAGE Exhibition | "States of Play”
We all play; it is a universal requirement.
We begin our lives in a state of play and constant discovery. Encouraged to free-flow, bang the drum, bark like a dog, imagine the spoon is an aeroplane flying into your mouth. It is playing that allows us to first touch and fully grasp the world.
As we age, we as individuals and as a species continue to play but the playing becomes more serious, there are rules. Play fighting becomes war and survival. Games become sport with losers and sacrifices. Battles play out on global political Chess boards, taking and shaking lands and lives, playing God with guns and medicines, diseases and displacement.
Art may be one of the few places where playing remains pure and childlike, where the winning and losing go hand in hand like two sides of the same coin. Artists push and pull the work to a point where it can not return, a place where the prize is the process itself.