browseThe Hoppings
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (Photographer)
From the original Side Gallery exhibition text:
I first came across The Hoppings when the sideshows still boasted such live showpieces as sheep with four horns, giants, dwarfs - and women. The latter were displayed in booths eight feet square: Palace of Continental Dreams, The Nude Look, Vampyre’s Daughter, The Living Half Woman, Fanny by Lamplight, Midnight Madness, Nipper the Stripper.
A chirpy teenager in a glittering bikini and boots gyrates outside a booth to the beat of Knock Three Times, rounding up an audience for the next show. Pimply youths file eagerly through the slit in the canvas, only to rub eyes in front of a withered old woman behind a lace curtain, grotesquely made-up and vulnerable under the 25Watt bulb. Stripped to her waist, she is holding an apple in one hand and a placard spelling EVE in the other. The sigh of relief is audible as the numbed group files out again. In the next tent a younger, but equally frightened daughter of Eve stands eyeball to eyeball with her little audience, pretending not to hear its considered judgment: "Our Cat’s got bigger ones!" Strippers were tied to one rule: they must stand still once down to their G-string. The bra flung, the jerky dance comes to an abrupt end, the light is switched off and the curtain is ripped across. Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
The Hoppings is a traditional meet for most of the itinerant fair people of Great Britain. Starting in the late eighteenth century it was originally held in conjunction with Newcastle Races, but now it alone occupies the Town Moor for one week every June. The photographs in this exhibition show some of the old traditional sideshows which have since disappeared from the fair as the more modern and mechanical ‘rib ticklers’ take their place.