Category
Installation, Photography, VideoPLAY ON [2021]
Two-channel video projection (8:28 min loop)
PLAY ON is an artwork created in response to the cancellation of contact sports, which occurred during restrictions which were put in place to stop the community spread of Covid-19. For many people that cancellation meant a severing of social and physical connections; a form of expression, an aspect of identity, and a sense of belonging was lost. PLAY ON is an expression of that loss.
For most, human touch is vital for well-being. It can also be an important way of strengthening bonds and expressing sentiments such as mutual dependency, trust, and affection. But in public it is rare to see Australian men expressing these sentiments to other men through the medium of touch. It is only on the sporting field that such expressions are common, and made freely. Touch among men, in this realm, is not feared. Rather, it is welcomed and reciprocated, and recognised as a bonding force. PLAY ON acknowledges these bonds through a performative act of endurance.
Originally, the intention behind PLAY ON was to explore the loss felt by contact sporting groups generally, without specifying a particular sporting code or club. However, after meeting Caleb Kuhle, President of the Castlemaine Football Netball Club, the importance of having a local focus on the work became clear. Caleb spoke with conviction and passion about what the club meant to him and to the club members, and its significance to the broader community.
The loss caused by the cancellation of sport was keenly felt here, in this town, and at this club.
PLAY ON is supported by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts fund, administered in Victoria by Regional Arts Victoria, and by the Castlemaine Football Netball Club.
[Photography by Emma Byrnes]
Reflections on Martin Lee’s PLAY ON
Words by Terry Jaensch
On the footy field contact is permissible, albeit policed. It is often prescriptive (as in, one or more of a number of strategic ‘plays’), aggressive (proactively defensive; tackling) and almost always fleeting (happens at speed, by accident or on the sly).
In a sport where ‘holding’ or sustained contact is penalised—as injurious to the game, players and by extension, spectators alike—the act as Lee presents it, between two ‘men,’ is quietly, calmly, revolutionary. One player upright, the other cradled in his arms, caught in the glare of field lights, stock still, stunning—a kind of un-bronzed statuary.
Holding, giving over to being held, in this arena combine to become, ironically, an act of resistance—a field-clearing intimacy. And in the face of this minutes long revolution—an eternity on the playing field—the pervasive call to ‘play on,’ by a township, code, club or spectatorship, forbids far more than it encourages.