Scott King | A New Life in Frigg

Exhibitions: FREE

Scott King | A New Life in Frigg

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Saturday 16 June - Sunday 09 September 2018

Firstsite

Do you remember:
When you knew your neighbours?
When shop assistants were not machines?
When you could still telephone your bank?
When a holiday was at home, not abroad?
When summer seemed to last forever?
When you felt that you belonged?

If you answered YES to any of these questions…

There may be a place in Frigg for YOU.

Frigg is a fictional new town created by artist and graphic designer Scott King. It is part of Britlin’s, a satirical proposal to redesign Britain as a 1970s holiday camp. A combination of the words ‘Britain’ and ‘Butlin’s’, Britlin’s plays with the power of collective nostalgia to imagine a new society. From a new Chairlift Network connecting Land’s End to John O’Groats, to the creation of self-policing New Towns fuelled by fun; Britlin’s proposes strategies to make “your past our future”.

‘A New Life in Frigg’ invites applicants to sign up to the Britlin’s vision. Potential residents can use the large site map to imagine their own day-to-day journeys around the town. In Come to Frigg (2018) – a newly commissioned work made by filmmaker Paul Kelly – a Britlin’s representative explains the advantages of relocating to this utopia. A series of questionnaires set up scenarios to test recruits suitability for joining the Britlin’s community, probing underlying concepts of nostalgia.

The design of the Frigg site is based on Butlin’s Clacton, a holiday camp located in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex. The camp was one of 10 camps founded by former showman Billy Butlin and opened in June 1938 with the vision of providing British working class families with ‘a weeks holiday for a weeks pay’. Butlin’s Clacton closed in September 1983 as a consequence of changing tastes and the development of package holidays abroad.

 

Additional texts: Matthew Worley
This exhibition has generously been supported by Omni Colour

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