Mackenzie Thorpe - Game of Life
Mackenzie explains...
With this portfolio set I have tried to express the reality of playing football for a boy growing up in the 1960's. For many of us during that period, football filled our lives with hope and promise. Through the game of football we would feel excitement and exhilaration racing through our bodies as we charged after the ball for hours and hours on end. Football infiltrated everything; it consumed whole days of our lives. Where I grew up, matches were played on the streets, in the shadows of industry; and looking back they seemed as intense, crucial and filled with passion as great as any I have witnessed since.
As I remember it the whole country was football crazy, it was all I seemed to see and hear on radio and television. Results were splashed across the newspapers, the ups and downs of footballers’ lives on everyone’s lips. On the streets it was no different. Everyone would be talking about the game, the events and dramas of that day’s play; who had gone home crying; whose window had been broken. The whole street would know who had fouled who, who scored the goals, who had new boots, who were the winners and who were the losers. And so it would continue, as a new day dawned, a new match would begin, goals to be scored and dreams to be realised – everyone ready for another game on the street.
This boy never loses his drive or his focus. He plays and plays even when alone or going to the shops, to and from school, any opportunity, any chance. His life is football, his joy is football and his pain is football. He never stops chasing his dream..........one day he will be ‘The Captain’ and bring home the cup.
This portfolio follows a child with a dream. All our children have dreams, some are realized, some are not. He is isolated from society because he is dedicated to realising this dream. No one wants to play with him, he is almost obsessive about the game. I identify with this boy - as a child, no one wanted to draw with me! I was always told to forget about being an artist. I would have to get a real job.
Courtesy of and copyright of text and images, Washington Green and Mackenzie Thorpe
