A mere stone throw away from the Castlegate, I continued on my treasure hunt trail to experience the Look Again Festival by locating the Peacock Visual Arts centre down a little alleyway so surreptitious in its location that I almost missed it completely. Thankfully, I did not and found what was to be my favourite discovery of the whole festival: ‘The Brutalist Playground’, by architect collective Assemble and artist Simon Terrill.
The juxtaposition of the marshmallow-esque building blocks and austere minimalist structural positioning really struck my fancy, and was very effective in establishing ‘a contemporary narrative’ for the post-war urban planning prevalent in and around London ’50s and 60’s. Fun, engaging, and provocative, ‘The Brutalist Playground’ was originally commissioned by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2015, and asks the audience to reconsider the original Brutalist designs and intentions, and our own contemporary attitude towards risk assessment and freedom to play. Not just for children, the light hearted nature of the ‘The Brutalist Playground’ inspires joy in people of all ages, something special and to be commended.
The public is invited to be part of the installation, what is a playground if not a space for play, the reconstituted foam providing a gloriously springy, playful platform for sensory experience. Not one to shy away from silliness, I was at first surprisingly self conscious as an adult on my own and felt an awkwardness reminiscent of infancy watching the big girls playing together and wishing they’d let me join in. One trip up the squishy pink staircase and down the appropriately adult-hipsize wide slide dispelled all social inhibitions prerequisite to maturation into the “grown-up world” and I fell a little bit more in love with the whole concept and piece.
There were a number of excellent events and exhibitions which I was unable to take in on my cultural treasure hunt including the ‘Unreal Estate’ commission, although I was amused to come across ‘Locked’, one of Iain Kettles’s two inflatable structures as part of Interzone, whose undisclosed locations encouraged the puplic to participate in a hide and seek game and question the relationship we all have with our surroundings. The playfulness of the Look Again Festival taking residence in such a rigid city centre surrounding built primarily of cold, grey granite was enchanting and I am delighted to discover that several of the exhibitions will still be accessible for the month of May, so there’s still time for more enlightening discoveries.
Aberdeen, you’re not so bad, and just like the bare Scottish landscape coming out of the winter and welcoming spring there are small signs of life starting to poke out and bring a little smile to my face. The year ahead is looking a little less grim and I hope to continue to find inspiration in my surroundings now I’ve seen the benefits of giving a place a second chance to show just what it has to offer.
in nooks and crannies 