Houses Fit for People: Tessa Lynch

Tessa Lynch

Testing Ground, 2022

Screenprint

H 95 x W 68 cm

Edition of 30

This edition was not part of the exhibition

Edinburgh Printmakers presents Glasgow-based artist Tessa Lynch, whose practice centres on feminist readings of the city, highlighting issues of social reproduction that are often at odds with contemporary art and life. The exhibition promotes alternative building techniques inspired by collaborative play and the natural world, taking its title from a 1986 BBC documentary series which looked at the failures of the modern movement's social housing.

The exhibition production has been supported by the Edinburgh College of Art John Florent Stone Residency Award, the duration of which was disrupted by the pandemic. Instead this residency time was spent at home, developing a series of more lo-fi print techniques alongside her young daughter. Concurrently, much of the imagery and sound for the exhibition originates from a children's workshop run by the artist at Glasgow Sculpture Studios.

Considering her installation an 'expanded print,' the artist responds to the history of the Castle Mills building and the regeneration taking place across Fountainbridge in the present.
Testing Ground ,
Medium : Boxes, paper, making tape, graphite, screenprint
Photography Credit: Alan Dimmick

Houses Fit for People is a new installation from Glasgow-based artists Tessa Lynch which promotes alternative building techniques inspired by collaborative play and the natural world. Lynch has approached the exhibition by thinking of it as an ‘expanded print,’ a layering-up of different pieces, including a large mural and sound work.

‘Houses Fit For People’ is a continuation of Lynch’s practice that offers feminist readings of the city, highlighting issues of social reproduction that are often at odds with contemporary art and life. This is particularly important in the making of Lynch’s work where she uses collaboration as a feminist strategy for making work, she carves out support systems amongst peers and between community groups to ensure work reflects a shared human experience.
Crying Woman, Photography Credit: Alan Dimmick

The exhibition as a whole elevates the creative status of the child. Techniques thought of as childish such as pasta printing, crayon rubbing and collage are plundered by the artist to emphasise the alternative thinking of the young enquiring mind. Much of the imagery and sound for the exhibition has come out of a childrens’ workshop that Lynch ran in April with Glasgow Sculpture Studios (GSS), where she holds a studio and is a regular contributor to the education programme.

Crying Woman is a large-scale intervention in the gallery, reconstructing a large construction site hoarding, and conversely, an area of the gallery now off-limits to the audience, painted in RAL shade ‘Worker’s Blue.’ Across the hoarding, taking inspiration from the work of photographer Anne Collier the title text is etched out in blown up pasta print.
Detail of Crying Woman
Medium : Site hoarding with wood, vinyl, plastic sheet, steel

Photography Credit: Alan Dimmick
Where It Might Land sits across the blue of the hoarding, dried sticky weed hovering above the surface, referencing the writing of Christine de Pizan, most notably her 1405 work ‘The Book of the City of Ladies.’ Considered one of the earliest feminist texts, part of the narrative depicts the women collectively throw the first stone to see where it lands and thus mark where the city belongs, leaving this to chance rather than pre-determination. Likewise, sticky weed is a small anarchic act that children do to subtly change their surrounding environment.
Arena — Stalled Space Table for a Community Garden
Medium : Wood, paint, steel, beads, plants

Photography Credit: Alan Dimmick

Arena — Stalled Space Table for a Community Garden recreates a table used at the location of the children’s workshops led by the artist in Glasgow, a reclaimed basketball backboard sited outdoors for play from a community garden in a former basketball court where whatever was on-hand was used to transform from former to current purpose. Our viewing of these works is overlaid by House Building, a recorded soundscape made as Lynch worked with a group of children from the Queen’s Cross Housing Association, in which she asked the children to imagine and build their dream homes with materials donated by GSS studio members.
Tessa Lynch continues to research the changing landscapes of cities across the UK, pertinent in light of the development taking place across Fountainbridge. Specific research for this show looked at the history of the Castle Mills site and its history as a factory for the North British Rubber Co Ltd. The North British Rubber Co Ltd archives tell the story of the factory’s expansion down to Dumfries in the early 1950’s and the need for new housing to encourage workers to settle there. This makes one reflect on how housing is planned today — with a limited return to office working and many shops trading online — how do we build a relevant house for the city of today? Are we at a point in time where we can completely re-imagine how a city might operate and is built? The artist’s work questions the suitability of the ubiquitous housing and commercial blocks being built up around Edinburgh Printmakers’ Castle Mills location.