‘Games & Theory’ was an international exhibition of the work of contemporary artists who share interests in play, sports and gaming. It was curated by Hammonds for the South London Art Gallery (SLG) in summer 2008.
Conventionally, play is understood as unfettered creative freedom, while gaming addresses competition and strategy. The exhibition’s originality lay in the way it brought these two distinct theories into dialogue. Hammonds’s exhibition explored the proposition that, as a social practice, play can also be understood as a form of political negotiation. Taking its cue from Situationist thinking, the exhibition explored the radical potential of play as a form of resistance and expression of freedom. The exhibition was structured as a playground to test the extent to which the conventional spaces of the gallery and its immediate environment could be modified and extended. ‘Games & Theory’ also engaged with the challenge of examining the ways in which conventional art practices and objects – such as painting – could be modified by participatory practices associated with play.
This was one of a series of projects curated by Hammonds at the SLG that transformed the gallery into an alternative social space. The exhibition marked the starting point of a three-year programme of ‘play’ within the SLG’s programme.
Hammonds set these curatorial ideas in a critical and artistic context in an essay entitled ‘Games people play’ in the accompanying book, The Cat Came as a Tomato: Conversations on Contemporary Art and Play (2011). In it, Hammonds reflected on the ways in which art has been conventionally grouped with play to contain it outside the public/political space. The exhibition was reviewed in Frieze, Art Monthly, Time Out and Art Review (all 2008).