The hoarding surrounds a building site immediately outside the Charlie Chaplin Adventure Playground.
Earlier this year Frances Wiliams, Education & Outreach Manager at the South London Gallery, negotiated its use for an artwork to be completed for the opening of the gallery’s expanded building in June – the show that opens in the new gallery space has the theme of walls.
The invitation to make work on the hoarding resulted from a previous residency at the playground. The brief for the residency was simple:
DO NOTHING HANG OUT SEE WHAT HAPPENS
And so I played an inordinate amount of football on wednesday afternoons and saturday mornings and ached all over for the rest of the week, and ideas indeed came:
A faded outdoors mural was painted over with black paint and became an area where children’s (and staff’s) thoughts and drawings were recorded – this week when I re-visited Charlie Chaplin the March Table Tennis Competition results were recorded on the wall.
I asked the play workers what was there first memory of play ?
First time I remember living next to Ronnie Corbett and there were caves and bats and I played there a lot and I loved playing in the rain and getting wet all the time and I ended up with pneumonia ~ Leroy
Then what is play ?
Play is trying stuff out
Play is testing and pushing it
Play is courting danger then going to far
Play is having fun but always striving to win
Play is seeing how fast you can run
Play is jumping from height and snacks at midnight
Play is climbing to the bendy branches at the top of a tree and watching my gran be scared for me ~ Brendan
I asked children to write / tell me stories – some of these will be published shortly (more of this later).
And a discussion was held at the South London Gallery between play workers, gallery staff, and artists. To literally kick the evening of, a football match was held in the gallery.
After much running about, shouting, exuberant goal celebrations and sending offs the discussion revolved around these points:
What are the differences of approach between artists and play workers ?
How is the work they do the same and how it is different ?
In what senses do artists lead ?
In what senses can children lead ?
What are the differences in how artists and children play ?
Can artists learn from play workers ? Can playworkers learn from artists ?
How can artists work with children to create work? In what sense is it ‘work’ ?
Has children’s play any relationship to contemporary art practice? If so, in what sense ?
In what sense can working with children be described as collaborative ?
