Grope Mountain - February 2017, London and Liverpool
Grope Mountain debuted in London and Liverpool for this year’s Valentine’s Day. Designed by Bompas & Parr, Grope Mountain originally launched in 2015 at the Museum of Sex in New York as part of FUNLAND, an interactive exhibition about the pleasures and perils of an eroticised fairground. The installation was inspired by modern climbing walls and made with custom holds, orifices and appendages – many cast from volunteers’ anatomies from the original show.
'The world's most obscene climbing wall' - Daily Mail
'World's most obscene climbing wall' has handholds in the shape of boobs, bums and PENISES' - The Mirror
'You’ll soon be able to climb a wall of genitals' - Metro
'A kinky climbing wall is being, um, erected in London this Valentine's Day' - Time Out
'NSFW: The rudest attraction Liverpool has ever seen is on its way for Valentine's Day' - The Liverpool Echo
The idea behind the wall was that as climbers engaged physically with the holds the experience encouraged a rethink of participants’ own bodies while encouraging a reappraisal of conventional climbing walls - also said to be intriguingly erotic through its combination of strength, balance and mental agility enhanced by the voyeurism of spectators watching below. Grope Mountain turbocharged that effect, making the erotic nature of the experience all the more manifest for climbers and spectators alike, resulting in an unrivalled date night for Valentine’s Day.
GROPE SANS
Grope Sans is a typeface designed by Bompas & Parr to accompany the UK launch of Grope Mountain. The fun, playful and tongue-in-cheek font graphically represents the experience of interacting with the climbing wall and was used in event signage, maps and hand-outs.
It was inspired by the inherent physicality of climbing and the voyeurism of climbing walls. The resulting font doesn’t shy away from the realities of sex and celebrates the primal interplay between hands and the body’s erogenous zones during sexual encounters. The cartoon-inspired graphic technique revels in the crude functionality of sexual interactions which typically involve digital manipulation. The colours used in the typeface are matched from the bespoke holds used throughout the installation which were all cast from volunteers’ anatomies from the original show in New York in 2015.
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