Shore thing

Artist Danny Passarella installs arcade machines on the beach

Artist takes coin-ops to the beaches of Whitley Bay

Artist Danny Passarella’s hometown of Whitley Bay isn’t what it once was. “Like many Victorian seaside resorts, it’s suffered over the decades,” he says. “The bars and pubs are now gone. The arcades are gone.”

In his new exhibition, OutRun, After Burner, Gauntlet and other cabinets take centre stage in beautified versions of Whitley Bay locales. “I wanted to make sure I used machines people who just had a passing interest in videogames might recognise, [but] they also had to have the beautiful cabinet artwork,” he says. “The concept of this project is that these machines have arrived and transformed the landscapes like the monolith from 2001.”

You can see his work at Forge & Co on Shoreditch High St on July 25, or visit www.passarella.co.uk/fantasy.