Doug Fishbone and Friends - Adventureland Golf pitches up at The Grundy in Blackpool

By Ben Miller | 13 August 2012
A photo of a sculpture of a green monster at the top of a hole on a green minigolf course
Adventureland Golf at Nova Festival. Photo: Emilie Harris
Installation: Doug Fishbone and Friends – Adventureland Golf, The Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool until October 6 2012

With hole designers including Jake and Dinos Chapman and David Shrigley, Adventureland might be the most provocative golf course ever made. When it first appeared earlier this summer at the Nova Festival in Sussex, it boggled and bemused visitors who squelched around it under frequent downpours.

A photo of a statue of a dictator on top of a green golf course hole
Doug Fishbone recreates the Saddam Hussein statue toppled in Paradise Square, Baghdad, in 2003
“The brief was open,” said Doug Fishbone, the London-based American artist behind it, who has also come up with a hole for budding putters.

“Mini or crazy or adventure golf is usually a very conservative thing, so we are going to push the envelope quite a bit – if the artists raise issues that might not normally be seen on a golf course, I promote that 100%.”

They’ve done that. Shrigley’s scrawlings remind us that “Golf Isn’t Boring” and “You Might be Stupid”. Jake and Dinos Chapman make a version of Hitler which is straight out of Dad’s Army. And Fishbone’s own effort is a recreation of the war-defining image of Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad statue being toppled by protestors.

Its festival appearance may have been a damp squib, but this indoor round – partly made in support of a rehabilitation campaign in Haiti – should fare better. Zatorski and Zatorski's final hole, which sees a ball rendered irretrievable by a set of black mausoleum-like slabs, makes for an end game of true finality.

“If someone was to take this work and stick a bar next to it in Hackney, we’d be millionaires,” said Fishbone. The glamour of Blackpool in autumn should suffice for now.

  • Open 10am-5pm (closed Sunday, 11am-4pm Bank Holidays). Admission free.

More pictures:

A photo of a statue of a sculpture of a dictator at the entrance to a green golf course hole
Jake and Dinos Chapman
A photo of a sculpture of a palm tree on sand surrounded by a shark-infested sea
Brian Griffiths
A photo of two golf course signs reading no digging and be nice in black ink on white
David Shrigley
A photo of a mini sculpture of a green minigolf course with an abstract figure for a hole
Gary Webb
A photo of a mini golf hole featuring a mini sculpture of a house and skip within it
Jonathan Allen
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