‘They wanted to end masculinity’: the artist inspired by anti-sexist men’s groups

Albert Potrony’s exhibition turns Gatehead’s Baltic into a giant creche, inspired by a radical Dutch playground architect and the forgotten feminist men’s movement of the early 70s

For most parents, the ritual of pushing your child on a swing or kicking a ball with them in the park is the diametric opposite of high culture and radical politics. But artist Albert Potrony doesn’t see it that way. “Play is an amazing vehicle to explore absolutely everything,” he says. “Play is a fundamental tool for self-discovery, for knowing how to be in the world. It’s basically the artists’ process. We play – but it’s serious play.”

In his past work (if “work” is the right word), Potrony has given children the freedom to devise their own toys and encouraged students and refugees to make sculptures together. In his latest exhibition, Equal Play at Gateshead’s Baltic, Potrony uses the realm of the children’s playground to smuggle in ideas about urban theory, imagination and masculine roles. A key reference point, he explains, is Aldo van Eyck, the pioneering Dutch architect who opposed the soulless, abstract, top-down tendencies of modernism.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3ERC6zo