Café Concrete

Saturday 11 October – Saturday 22 November 2014

Glasgow Sculpture Studios is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Tessa Lynch, developed throughout her one year Graduate Fellowship at GSS from November 2013 until November 2014. This exhibition continues the artist’s formal investigations into the mimicry of urban objects, techniques and scenarios in order to provide a space for commentary on the emotional impact of the built environment and the neo-liberalism that commands the design of the 21st century city.

Café Concrete is a portrait of a “city living” artist, in which Lynch critiques her own ideal image of an artist “living as flaneur” by recognising the near impossibility of the task. Here Lynch focuses on the long debated existence of the “flaneuse”, the female version of the saunterer, questioning how do women experience and occupy public space?

For the exhibition Lynch has created a new series of sculptures, executed in ubiquitous urban materials such as aluminium, plaster, paper mulch, rain water and plastic sheeting. Reworked through a series of techniques linked to industrial construction these objects formally echo Lynch’s everyday city scenarios and observed ‘flâneurial exploits’. For Lynch, an artist whose work often revolves around performative and collaborative situations, Café Concrete focuses in on the artist’s personal and performative negotiations with the fabric of the city itself. The majority of the works allude to the presence of a person(s) and or an action; the discarded tote bags their contents emptying out; the rain splattered cagoules weathered by the typically Glaswegian skies; a set of keys left on a shelf.

The ideas at play in Café Concrete are played out in an accompanying text work “Eddie Stobart and the Flâneuse” which the artist has developed in collaboration with writer and curator Jenny Richards. The text takes inspiration from a recorded journey that the artist Patrick Keiller and architect Cedric Price made together along the Thames Estuary. Lynch and Richards embark on a similar journey in which the pair cross Glasgow via Lynch’s daily commute and attempt to inhabit the flâneuse in a city scarred by its transport routes and marked by constant change. The text, presented on a café newspaper stand provides the viewer with the most intimate insight into Lynch’s thought and experience of city life, specifically in Glasgow and as with all the other works invites the audience to become a flâneuse, and wander through Cafe Concrete drawing out their own observations.

Tessa Lynch (b. Surrey UK) received her BA Hons Tapestry from Edinburgh College of Art in 2007 which included an exchange to Kyoto Saga University of the Arts, Japan. She received her MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 2013. Solo projects and exhibitions include Better Times, Performance commission for Whitstable Biennale, Kent (2012), You Are Here, Produced for Edinburgh’s BBC Live site screen produced by Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2010), Alexandrite, performance at performance at Edinburgh International Climbing Arena and accompanying exhibition at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2010) and News You Can Use, New Work Scotland Programme, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2007). Selected group shows and projects include Fall Scenes GSA MFA Post-Degree Project. Fleming House, Glasgow (2013), Performing Sculpture, Modern One, Edinburgh (2012), Joy Axe, Embassy, Edinburgh, Act II, Rhubaba, Edinburgh (2011), Keep Floors and Passages Clear, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham and White Columns New York (2010), Medienmarionetten in collaboration with Owen Williams at Subvision in association with Publish and Be Damned, Hamburg (2009) and Sunday Supplement, in association with Publish and be Damned, Camden Arts Centre, London (2008).

Information about the Fellowship

The 2013 selection panel included Siobhan Carroll, Curator, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Michelle Cotton, Senior Curator, Firstsite, Colchester, Sarah McCrory, Director, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Kyla McDonald, Head of Programme, Glasgow Sculpture Studios and Mary Redmond, Artist and GSS Studio Holder.

The Fellowship running since 2005 is awarded annually to a graduate of The Glasgow School of Art’s Master of Fine Art Programme. Running for one year the award comprises of annual GSS Artist Membership, private studio accommodation, access to professional opportunities and specialist communal production facilities, training and curatorial, technical and administrative support. In addition to the above, funding is secured towards realising a solo project, as part of the GSS Public Programme.

The Graduate Fellowship is generously supported by The Gordon Foundation.

This exhibition is generously supported by anCnoc Whisky.