“Monkey business” or “monkeying around” is an English idiom that means to waste time by doing silly things, but monkeys are very smart and playful creatures, and play is a valuable means of exploring yourself, your world and everything in it. I recently learned a lot about play through a friend who’s an expert on it, so we decided to focus on the value of play for the next installation. The fact that toy monkeys are super cute was an added bonus.
Humour is attractive and engaging, so we had to have the monkeys appear to be monkeying around themselves. A walk through the gigantic store that is Jumbo provided the perfect props… shower caps and luffas.
In keeping with previous installations, this one included a translation of the text in Greek and a one-liner in Arabic, in which the word for monkey is used to refer to someone cheeky.
How do you play and explore? A white board with attached pens invited people to share their experiences. Within a few hours the board was full and another placed on top of it to invite yet more comments.
Installation date: 14 June 2020
