Global Gambits and Playful Revisions

Exploring how artists use play and satire to highlight global issues such as climate change, colonisation, and political injustices.

Global Gambits and Playful Revisions delves into the role of play and games in navigating life's challenges. Artists creatively use play, satire, and repurposed children's toys to shed light on issues such as climate change, colonisation, and political injustices. Experience racing cars, toy soldiers and circuit-bended electronic toys through the lens of an artist’s playful yet serious call to awareness.

The exhibition explores how we use play and games in our lives to deal with, practice for and talk about difficult situations, and the way that through play, satire and repurposing of material like children's toys and infantile attributes, artists raise awareness of and make us confront subjects like climate change, colonisation and political injustices. The exhibition frames the discourse on how playful engagement and critical thought can coalesce to challenge and redefine perceptions of global and social issues. It emphasises the dynamic interplay between visual satire and the serious undertones of the themes it addresses, creating a space where art and activism intersect with the transformative power of humour. This exhibition posits that through the strategic use of contrast – between the light-hearted and the grave, the simple and the complex – artists can provoke a deeper contemplation on the revisions needed in our societal visions.

Each artwork acts as a portal, offering viewers an opportunity to engage with alternative narratives that challenge the status quo, encouraging a re-evaluation of preconceived notions and the possibility of envisioning a different future. Through ‘playful revisions’, the exhibition explores the idea that art can serve as a catalyst for change, employing the juxtaposition of humour and gravity to illuminate the path towards societal transformation.

Artists: Giles Alexander, Zachariah Fenn, Josh Harle, Professor Ian Howard, Freya Jobbins, Dapeng Liu, Amanda Marburg, Joan Ross, Ariel Ruby and Toydeath

Image: Josh Harle, The Accident (detail), 2024, still from interactive work

A Willoughby City Council curated exhibition presented in partnership with the Sydney Comedy Festival and Checkmate Chatswood.