If life is a crap shoot, then the Japanese educational system is a game of mini-golf, or so reckons Peter Bellars: That's the message behind the English artist's current Yokohama Museum of Art Gallery exhibition.
"Par for the Course" comprises a video of Brits playing "crazy golf," as the putting pastime is called in the U.K.; an off-scale diorama of golfer figurines and Japanese schools; a collection of trophies and souvenir balls and T-shirts; and the main attraction -- a "full-size" playable eight-hole mini-golf course in fake turf, wood and objet.
Visitors (and the numbers have been good, with attendance of about 2,000 so far) are invited to play through the course with a supplied set of clubs, balls, and score cards and pencils. The holes represent progressive steps in the Japanese educational system. By sinking a putt, players "graduate" to the next level.