Hole in platform one: Mini-golf to take over Flinders Street ballroom

Mini-golf might not seem particularly subversive, but the game has radical origins and a surprisingly fascinating history.

In the middle of the year, Flinders Street Station’s ballroom and surrounds will be transformed into a series of miniature putting greens for visitors to play on. Called Swingers, it’s one of the first events to be announced for Melbourne’s Rising festival.

Saeborg in costume for Swingers, the show that will transform the Flinders Street Station ballroom and surrounding rooms into a series of mini golf courses.Credit: Simon Schluter

American filmmaker, writer, and artist Miranda July and acclaimed APY Lands artist Kaylene Whiskey – whose works incorporate pop culture references alongside traditional Anangu culture – will create mini-golf courses with obstacles for the show, as will Japanese artist Saeborg.

Grace Herbert, who loved playing mini-golf as a child in Tasmania, came up with the idea. “Obviously, [it’s] a game that is fun, silly and joyful, but it is sometimes infantilised a bit because of that. It’s actually got this really interesting social and cultural history,” she said.

Invented by Scottish women in the 19th century who weren’t allowed to play golf proper, the sport soon also attracted men. The clubhouses attached to the mini-golf greens became the place to be, and there’s a nod to that idea with a club-style bar on site.

Swingers curator Grace Herbert with Saeborg in costume.Credit: Simon Schluter

In the United States in the 1930s and ’40s, the game became popular with African-American communities and during the Prohibition era, with about 50,000 mini-golf courses across the US. A course in Boston was the first public recreation facility in the US to be desegregated.

Based in Tokyo, the artist Saeborg (a mix of her real name, Saeko, and cyborg) creates art exploring gender and sexuality, making and wearing latex costumes, but mostly of creatures rather than humans.

For Rising, it wasn’t practical for participants to wear a full costume, so she made ears and tails of different forest animals. The tail is inflatable and becomes a surrogate golf club.

Girls putting at the Bobby Links mini-golf course at Bondi, Sydney, circa 1930. Credit: Fairfax

Her putting-green creatures reflect on strength and weakness. “I would like people to enjoy the inconvenience of a weaker body and softer materials,” she said, adding that the idea of metamorphosis underpins her art. “My intention is to change and alter my own figure. In making these costumes, I want to go beyond gender or race. I’m a female and I try to be released from the role of being a woman, that’s why I change my figure.”

Herbert believes mini-golf has continued to be a game for rule-breakers – a tradition she is keen to see continue. “People can come and play and have fun and engage with the concepts for each artwork in the show ... [it’s] going to be this fun, ridiculous, hands-on experience.

“You might have your fortune told, travel to desert country, become a human-animal hybrid or find yourself singing along with Dolly Parton,” she said.

First held in 2020, Rising is Melbourne’s winter festival, a merger of White Night and the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Swingers is at Flinders Street Station from June 4 to August 31 as part of Rising, which runs from June 4-15.