RISING, Melbourne’s premier winter arts festival is back. From Wednesday 4 June to Sunday 15 June, the city will ignite for 12 unmissable days of new music, art, and performance.
Today, the festival unveils a major new creative commission in Swingers: The Art of Mini Golf – a mind-bending, playable art exhibition that will transform the Flinders Street Station Ballroom and labyrinthine upper level into a surreal, holey new world.
With nine imaginative mini-golf holes dreamt up by some of the world’s most dynamic female-identifying artists, this is no ordinary game, it’s an artistic adventure waiting to be played.
Opening on the first day of RISING and running for an extended season until Sunday 31 August, the smashing line-up of artists is set to transform mini-golf into a joyful, and unexpected hands-on art experience.
Acclaimed filmmaker, writer and artist Miranda July (USA), following the release of the brilliantly offbeat All Fours, will take a swing, going ‘all fores’ on the course. Kaylene Whiskey (AU) tees up a vibrant fusion of pop culture and Anangu traditions while Tokyo’s Saeborg (JAP) unleashes a world of latex creatures with cartoonish menace.
The artist roster doesn’t stop there, Nabilah Nordin (AU), now based in Los Angeles, returns home to Melbourne, reimagining her signature playful and experimental sculptures with a putting twist. Delaine Le Bas (UK) brings politically charged sculptures and intricate embroidery and Natasha Tontey (ID) weaves speculative storytelling through mythology, technology, and alternative histories.
Developed by RISING Senior Curator Grace Herbert, Herbert drew on mini-golf’s radical femme roots to select some of the most adventurous artists working in Australia and internationally to take part in the project.
“The history of mini golf is surprisingly subversive and sits at the heart of this project. It’s been incredible to see how each artist has taken this on. Alongside playing mini-golf and experiencing the artworks, you might have your fortune told, travel to desert country, become a human-animal hybrid, or even find yourself singing along to Dolly Parton,” said Herbert.
“RISING is about creating collective experiences and Swingers continues that tradition. Bringing such unique artistic minds into the creation of a 9-hole course is a literal game changer. I can’t wait to see audiences step up and take their shot,” said RISING Co-Artistic Directors Hannah Fox and Gideon Obarzanek.
The original mini golf game was dreamt up by 19th-century Scottish women who were banned from the ‘real’ golf courses but refused to sit on the side lines.
Over the centuries, the humble sport continued to be a game for rule breakers, fuelling a putt putt craze in prohibition-era Los Angeles, with rooftop courses and roadside attractions embracing whimsical, obstacle-filled designs, to later becoming one of the first desegregated public spaces in the USA by the 1940s.
This is the third time RISING has radically transformed the Flinders Street Ballroom anew following an almost four decades period of the space being left dormant. The iconic artist Patricia Piccinini was the first to use the space, showcasing her ground-breaking hometown exhibition, A Miracle Constantly Repeated in 2021.
This interactive transformation of one of the city’s most iconic spaces offers just a taste of what’s to hit Melbourne this winter with the full RISING program set to be announced in March.
Swingers The Art of Mini Golf takes place in the Flinders Street Station Ballroom from 4 June – 31 August 2025. For more information, visit: www.rising.melbourne for details.
Image: Swingers The Art of Mini Golf – photo by Eugene Hyland