Game Over, Henry Hargreaves

JournalArt & Culture

Game Over, Henry Hargreaves

Toying with childhood favourites...

Childhood games hold mixed emotions for me – on the one hand, they filled countless hours of school holidays, and in the days when a Sega Megadrive was the height of electronic sophistication, there wasn’t a lot else to do when it rained. On the other hand, I mostly played them with my older brother, who beat me at everything. Every time. I’m still convinced he used to move his battleships around to avoid my missiles, nick an extra £100 quid here and there from the Monopoly bank, and sneak a look at the Cluedo killer when I went to the toilet.

Photographer/designer Henry Hargreaves (fresh from toying with deep fried gadgets and coloured rice) has taken an alternative look at childhood games – not from the point of view of their entertainment value, but in terms of their empirical visual appeal.

Stripping away all their colour, rendering them useless as games, he looks at their sculptural qualities in a collection called Game Over. The result is, among others, a Rubik’s Cube I actually have a chance of completing, and a Connect 4 rig I have a shot at winning on, and for those reasons alone this series gets the thumbs up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a therapist appointment…

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