SEVEN holes, a golf putting club, a red ball and a beermat for an official scorecard make up a new sporting attraction at York Art Gallery from tomorrow.

Welcome to New York artist Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, “the best mini golf course in York”, where crazy golf, art installations and political comment combine in the gardens behind the gallery.

Doug, a self-confessed hopeless player, was in his brightest yellow jumper for yesterday’s launch, newly arrived from London. “It felt a bit odd walking through King’s Cross this morning dressed like that,” he said, after suffering in the name of golf fashion for his art.

His Leisure Land Golf made its debut at the 2015 Venice Biennale and was later rolled out in Derby and Nottingham but the York course marks two firsts: this is the first time the course has been set up entirely outdoors and the first time too that a crowdfunding campaign was mounted through the Art Fund’s Art Happens scheme to raise £10,000 from public donations to bring Leisure Land to a city. “I’m honoured that the people of York have seen fit to do that,” said Fishbone.

The course comprises seven holes cum artworks designed by Reactor, Yinka Shonibare, Eyal and Ines Weizman, Hetain Patel, John Akomfrah, Doug Fishbone and Ellie Harrison, each commissioned by Fishbone. There is humour, such as in Reactor’s Crocodile, inspired by crocodiles invading golf courses; there are more serious works, such as Patel’s crouching green man, representing exploited Indian factory workers; Shonibare’s mushroom cloud of footballs, and Akomfrah’s black figure in a hoodie, recalling a police shooting in Birmingham, Alabama.

Fishbone’s own work depicts the stricken Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia: a piece designed for the Venice Biennale to comment on giant boats destroying the Venice lagoon. “I wanted to do something that was visually striking and structurally interesting,” he said. “Is Leisure Land trivialising things? No I don’t think so. You play the game but hopefully you think about things too.”

The course will be in situ from tomorrow to September 3. To play a game costs £3, children £2, families of four £8; for more details, visit yorkartgallery.org.uk/exhibition/leisure-land-golf/