Next – Project
Simon Terrill and Assemble
The Brutalist Playground, 2016/2025
Installation: Timber, recycled foam | 9000 L x 6405 W mm
Commissioned by RIBA, 2016 & Incinerator Gallery, 2025
Projection: Two screen projection | silent, duration: 13″30 mins
Commissioned by Incinerator Gallery, 2025
The Brutalist Playground (2016/2025), reproduced for The Playground Project Melbourne and presented for the first time in Australia at Incinerator Gallery’s Boadle Hall, is a re-imagination of an existing work by Australian-born visual artist, Simon Terrill and the Turner-prize winning multi-disciplinary UK collective, Assemble.
Assemble and Simon Terrill, The Brutalist Playground, 2015/2025. The Playground Project Melbourne (install view), 2025. Photo Timothy Burgess. Courtesy Incinerator Gallery MVCC.
Originally commissioned by the Royal Institute of British Architects to be ‘part sculpture, part architectural installation, all play’, this iteration of the project is an immersive installation inspired by Park Hill, Sheffield’s modernist social housing estate. The once outdoor forms of harsh, concrete architecture are reimagined in soft, recycled confetti-coloured foam, transforming a tough material and real-life building, into an indoor destination for exploration and play.
Assemble and Simon Terrill, The Brutalist Playground, 2015/2025. The Playground Project Melbourne (install view), 2025. Photo Timothy Burgess. Courtesy Incinerator Gallery MVCC.
Terrill’s accompanying two-channel projection incorporates archival footage of the original Incinerator building, designed by world-renowned architects and life partners, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. Drawing connections between the Incinerator’s design and the artist’s own childhood in Canberra – which was designed by the architects as Australia’s mid 20th century utopian capital city – the work reflects how architectural space mediates the boundaries between public and private identity.
Assemble and Simon Terrill, The Brutalist Playground, 2015/2025. The Playground Project Melbourne (install view), 2025. Photo Timothy Burgess. Courtesy Incinerator Gallery MVCC.
“Growing up, the Burley Griffins’ design of Canberra became our teenage playground. It was all about open space and a weird kind of concrete geometry. Those early experiences feel like a perfect fit with this new work at the Incinerator Gallery.”
– Simon Terrill
Assemble and Simon Terrill, The Brutalist Playground, 2015/2025. The Playground Project Melbourne (install view), 2025. Photo Timothy Burgess. Courtesy Incinerator Gallery MVCC.
Credits:
Concept and Design
Simon Terrill and Assemble
Production
AKWT Studio
Project Management
MJ Flamiano, Public Art Officer, Incinerator Gallery MVCC
Jade Niklai, Head of Visual and Public Art, Incinerator Gallery MVCC
Program Partner:
