list.co.uk/festival val Tessa Lynch | FESTIVAL VISUAL ART Tessa Lynch | FESTIVAL VISUAL
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C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T S T A N D J U P T E R A R T L A N D
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RAISING
THE ROOF Tessa Lynch’s new artwork for Jupiter Artland invites audiences to construct a house in an afternoon. David Pollock gives it a go
‘I think we’ll just press on,’ says Tessa Lynch, eyeing the steel grey skies warily. The drizzle hasn’t stopped all morning, with signs suggesting it’s only going to get worse. The group of 12 volunteers assembled around her in the courtyard of Jupiter Artland nod in agreement and follow her along the untreated lane to the former orchard of Bonnington House. After all, she asked us here to build a house in an afternoon, and that’s what we’re going to do.
The ‘house’, it transpires, is a l at, raised wooden foundation erected on the gravel patch in the centre of the orchard, and a number of monolithic black wooden slabs laid alongside – some with exposed panels or Perspex ‘windows’ – that can be slotted into grooves on the foundation to create simulated walls.
Before we start, Lynch gives us a health and safety briei ng and hands out protective gloves and hats, and we communally design the i nished site on a chessboard-sized scale model. The Glasgow-based artist also explains why this participatory art piece is what she wanted to
contribute to the Scotland-wide GENERATION contemporary art project. The foundation we’re standing on, she says, is 96 metres square, which is the footprint of the average UK family home. It feels neither smaller nor larger than you might expect. She’s interested in traditional and modern attitudes towards what constitutes a home and how you build one – for example, the old Amish tradition of barn raising, where the men of the village come together to build a barn and the women cook their meal of celebration afterwards.
It’s not a division of labour that Lynch is keen to recreate, but she likes the sense of community within that process. On Dartmoor, she continues, there used to be an assumed law of ‘land claiming’ whereby anyone who could build a house and light a i re in the hearth by sunset was allowed to keep the land, a process that required the consent and assistance of the community. Of course the building and ownership of property is now also a deeply political subject. She mentions planning minister Nick Boles’
Right to Build scheme, the descendant of Right to Buy. ‘Not that I’m advocating that,’ says Lynch, ‘but maybe the UK is ready for something like it?’ Property shows have given us the vocabulary to discuss building our own homes, she says, so now we just need the tools. Even in this simplii ed two-hour format, we’re brought nearer to the experience – shrugging off the rain, talking to one another, getting caught up in the process. When we i nish, Lynch pours cups of lemonade in place of mead, a traditional payment that was often brewed in Lindisfarne, reminding us that land ownership is rarely more disputed than across borders.
‘Most of the artists I know don’t own their own homes,’ she says as we throw our empty paper cups on the brazier, our makeshift hearth, ‘so to create a work and claim that space is what gives us a sense of ownership.’
Tessa Lynch’s Raising, Jupiter Artland, 01506 889900, 2, 17 & 23 Aug, 6 & 20 Sep, free. To participate contact enquiries@jupiterartland.org
31 Jul–7 Aug 2014 THE LIST FESTIVAL 87