“Planning For Play involves a culturally sophisticated struggle, too, with considerable research conducted into the often questionable optimism of inner-city architectural regeneration projects.” The Guardian Guide
For the next edition of our Platform residency programme, artists Simon & Tom Bloor are producing a series of new sculptures based on their research into children’s playspaces and the postwar urban landscape. Over the course of five weeks they are transforming Site Gallery into an open studio, exhibition space and play area.
The artists are publicly and openly generating designs for new play-sculptures in one of our gallery spaces. Visitors are invited to watch them work-up ideas and wall drawings, as well as experiment with materials they’ve never used before or materials they are utilising in a new way. The accompanying gallery is a dedicated exhibition and playspace with some of the elements created by the artists being playable.
The designs produced during Planning for Play are inspired by the work of a number key postwar architects who helped legitimise the involvement of architects in play. This includes Dutch designer Aldo van Eyck’s turning bars and climbing igloos, American architect Richard Dattner’s playcubes and modular units, and the work of Lady Allen Hurtwood, whose 1968 book, Planning for Play, is referenced in the project’s title. Simon & Tom Bloor aim to explore art making as a playful process and play as a creative process.
About the artists:
Simon & Tom Bloor’s works and projects focus on our often ambivalent relationship to the structures of public space. They are currently developing large-scale public artworks in Cambridge and London and have been commissioned by Arnolfini Gallery and Bristol City Council as part of the Primary Capital Programme. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Whitechapel Gallery (2013) South London Gallery (2011) and Modern Art Oxford (2010). They were born in Birmingham in 1973 and are amongst the founding directors of Eastside Projects, Birmingham.
Site Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation who are funding our programme of Platform Residencies from 2013 to 2016.
Photographs of the project:
Read more about their Platform residency progress on the Platform blog