Ip Dip is a participatory installation/ performance whereby participants compete on a croquet set for prizes. Spectators vote on which player they believe will win, with the offer of a reward if they chose the right competitor. The game plays with notions of power and futility as participants' expectations of the rules are subverted. They are judged against different criteria than who completes the course first, undermining their agency within the game. Notions of pre-judgement and factionalism are touched upon by the audience predicting who they think will win at the beginning, with an incentive for them to want their pre-judgements vindicated for their own gain.
Juxtaposing bodily imagery such as anthropomorphised teeth with politically charged symbols such as an EU star draw on ideas of individual and national vanity. My personal experience of having braces in order to improve my social standing led me to consider the role of self-policing in social exclusion in this work. The combination of images associated with juvenile social popularity and national debates implies a mirroring of playground politics in national discourse, raising questions of navigating unspoken etiquette which contributes to social gatekeeping, and how this individual insecurities are reflected in national anxieties around cultural identity.
