I went through a gameboard phase in 2011. I know it was 2011, because I asked my friend Ruth who shopped in thrift shops to look out for monopoly sets for me. I went to Chicago for their summer to study improv. When i was there i got occasional texts from her saying she’d found monopoly or scrabble boards, and I sent her money.
this gameboard from a Dracula board game i turned into a 3D map using the houses from the monopoly sets (see parts of them here and here) that she found for me.
I used a handmade paper with bits of bamboo in it to cover over the gameboard, and I imagined little neighbourhoods based on the arterial roads created by the bamboo. I kept colours together because it was clearly what would happen.
The houses differ in size (some of the monopoly sets were for little kids, the houses were quite large). I equated this with the mansions and the slums and the differing sizes in between.
Over time the houses have fallen off (i stuck them on with several different kinds of glues). And it was quite hard to store. So this has been assigned to the great recycle bin in the sky. The photos look great though!
And what I learnt from this piece I applied in my Newtown series in 2013.
