A catalogue produced as part of the 'Super Fun Tyre' exhibition, 2024
The grid pattern and changeable format aims to replicate something of the experience of walking around the exhibition.

Find out more about the exhibition here
Downloadable, printable pdf version
available here
Instructions: 
1. Download file
2. Print double-sided on A3 (flip on short edge)
3. Trim at crop marks
4. Fold between images
5. Cut along marked lines
6. Fold into booklet
Seaside Pleasures
Martha Lineham

Artist-Ethnographer and Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University
PhD The (Amusement) Arcades Project.

The British seaside resort has historically been practiced by visitors as a place to escape the burdens of everyday life, through activities, behaviours, and spaces that foreground fun, restoration and relaxation. Infused with folk and pop cultural references, contemporary British seaside resorts are often contradictory sites of excess and restraint, dynamism and dreariness, the real and the imaginary. Enhancing and cushioning hopes for holiday sunshine through an expanse of bright colours, contrasting scales, spritely typography and mystifying illumination, seaside promenades mark themselves out as ‘in-between’ times and spaces that facilitate occasions of discontinuity and escape.
Amongst a variety of salubrious seaside pleasures, amusement arcades persist plentifully, adorning the shoreline with their sparkly attire. Rooted in fairground culture and developed during the 20th and 21st centuries, each seaside amusement arcade has its own intriguing identity. In my Artist-Ethnographer research, I am drawn to the material, sensory and atmospheric qualities of these eclectic places, where there is much more at play than merely winning and losing. The thrill of an arcade carpet underfoot, patterned, loud and worn out. A fantastic bit of longstanding neon signage or a joyfully clunky old computer controller. Theme tunes from Jurassic Park and Coronation Street games machines assembling in strange chorus with percussive clunks and whirs. The earthy weight of copper coins warmed in your hands, poised for play. Prize piles of cutesy soft toy creatures and empty sugary promises. Amusement arcades and the seaside resorts that surround them arguably embody much of the dreams, endeavours and fabrications of society. For many, seaside resorts are sites of re-enactment and discovery; resonating with past holidays and daytrips. Through returned visits, we recall and activate special time experience.
Stuart Robinson and I both grew up in the landlocked shire of Northampton, where childhood excursions to British seaside resorts were frequent occurrences. We have a shared and ongoing fascination with the visual and material culture and emergent experiences that British seaside resorts continue to offer, attending to them in our creative practices and foregrounding them as something to celebrate.
www.marthalineham.com
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