Playable exhibition ‘The Art of Mini Golf’ at Battersea Arts Centre announces ninth hole artist – Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

RISING Melbourne and Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) are delighted to announce that internationally acclaimed British artist and game designer, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley will design the ninth hole artwork for The Art of Mini Golf when it travels to London this summer. Brathwaite-Shirley’s work will join works by a stellar lineup of leading women artists for the UK premiere of RISING Melbourne’s playable exhibition, which will take over Battersea Arts Centre from 17 June to 26 July.

Brathwaite-Shirley’s recent solo exhibitions at London galleries Serpentine North (2025) and LAS (2024) layered animation, sound and video games to create immersive spaces where the viewer became an active participant. Simultaneously playful and serious, her work is intended to act as a mirror to her audience, asking them to consider how their everyday choices might ultimately impact the world we live in. Her work shines a neon light on fraught global issues from censorship to wealth inequality.

In the new commission, Enough Is Enough, Brathwaite-Shirley uses the language of video games and the digital revolution to critique the way technology has redefined our world, for better and for worse. Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley comments: “We live in a world defined by technology; we are both more connected and lonelier than ever before, and our data is used without our knowledge to monitor, control and censor almost all parts of our existence. Enough Is Enough uses humour to access the anxieties and complex feelings of the participant around what they might gain and loose in this brave new world; the growing wealth gap, the ‘smart’ bombs dropping in our name, the surveillance and silencing of protest. Is this the world you want?

Formerly known as ‘Swingers’, The Art of Mini Golf originally premiered at RISING Festival, Melbourne before travelling to Brisbane Powerhouse in January 2026. Both an interactive contemporary art exhibition and a playable mini golf course, it features nine interactive golf hole artworks designed by leading women artists from around the world.

Works include filmmaker and writer Miranda July’s Wave of Fortune, inspired by the 1970’s amusement park ride Pirates of the Caribbean. Yankunytjatjara artist Kaylene Whiskey draws on her childhood, creating Ananyi-Travelling, which weaves pop icons through traditional Anangu culture. Japanese artist Saeborg’s piece Animal Golf invites players to swap a traditional putter for a strap-on latex animal tail and use their bodies to play. Turner Prize nominee Delaine Le Bas uses a square ball in Square peg, round hole. NO!. Minahasan artist Natasha Tontey entwines speculative storytelling through mythology, technology, and alternative histories with Hole for the Simian Crone. Atlanta rapper BKTHERULA collaborates with sound artist Kate Miller to make flowers bloom in Swamp Flower. Australian experimental film duo Soda Jerk’s Algorithmic K-Holes and the Techno-Serfdom of Simulated Entrapment Under Slop Capitalism involves a hallucinatory video installation that fuses academic critique with the paranoid rhythms of conspiracy rants. The Influential Hobart-based photo-media artist Pat Brassington references old fairground and parlour games in Faceoff.

The exhibition was commissioned by RISING Melbourne and curated by Australian artist Grace Herbert.

The Art of Mini Golf explores the game’s subversive history – invented by 19th century Scottish women who were banned from ‘real’ courses but refused to sit on the sidelines. The exhibition invites audiences to experience contemporary art through movement and play. Works range from surreal video environments and fortune telling, to pop icons and playful reimagining’s of fairground games.

While the exhibition foregrounds the feminist roots of mini golf, its London home adds a further layer of significance. Battersea Arts Centre, formerly Battersea Town Hall, was a central meeting place for the campaign for women’s suffrage, frequented by Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst and remains a building shaped by bold and progressive ideas. The Art of Mini Golf brings this history into the present, inviting audiences to explore a space where art, play and imagination meet and where voices historically excluded from public space are placed at the centre.

The Art of Mini Golf at BAC is supported by House of Oz, a philanthropic powerhouse championing Australian creative arts on international stages and screens.

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