PERIPHERY | PLAYTIME

The playground is a cultural microcosm; there is no prescriptive 'purpose' for the children - they are free to behave as they wish - and one easily observes the similarities with bacterial behaviour. The children tend to cluster and interact like micro-organisms. They have relatively blank minds and ideas, languages and crazes spread rapidly, manifesting in the proliferation of anything from songs and jokes to displays of Pokemon and Reeboks. In a workshop with a class, the children identified to me over a hundred playground games in half an hour - many mutations of games I remember. Biological replication is also encouraged (measles, nits). The childen run about laughing and screaming, repeating and mimicing as the new cultural entities leap about from child to child, and the children sense the communication: A culture is being bred.

DIESEL STYLELAB, LONDON (ANIMATIONS) JAN - FEB 2000
WATERSHED, BRISTOL (ANIMATIONS) MAY 2000
MUD DOCK, EXETER SEPT - NOV 2000
SEVERNSHED, BRISTOL NOV - DEC 2000
HOPE STREET GALLERY, LIVERPOOL APRIL - MAY 2001

PRESS REVIEW, Sam Brown, 20-26 November 2000
"Playtime, an exhibition of digitally modified playground images by Bristol artist Joe Magee challenges the stereotypical sugar-sweet image of children at play. The show features images of school playgrounds which have been duplicated, manipulated and reorganised, rather like Grange Hill on acid. Magee uses the images to portray the different types of social interaction which occur at playtime. Previous exhibitions by the artist have dealt with the similar themes of genetic modification and reproduction. Magee began his research by holding a workshop with a bunch of schoolchildren. In the space of only 30 minutes they told him about over 100 different playground games. He worked with the idea that children at play tend to interact like micro-organisms - songs, jokes and games proliferate, passing from one individual to another, in much the same way as measles and headlice are transmitted. The result? Think Hieronymous Bosch meets the BBC2 testcard girl"