When I was a child, my friend’s dog had puppies and she invited us all over to meet them, then go for a round of mini-golf. She called it pat pat putt putt and it was the most legendary game of mini-golf I’d ever played. Until now.
Swingers, the interactive exhibition central to this year’s Rising festival, brings a dash of whimsy and weirdness to the game. Each of the nine holes is designed by a different female artist in homage to the sport’s little-known feminist history: created in 1867 when women were barred from playing the main game at St Andrews links in Scotland. As curator Grace Herbert says on the Swingers preview night: “We think of [mini-golf] as silly, childlike and infantilising – but it has a subversive history.”
