Gabor Stark and I were short listed for the Royal Academy Summer Show event a few weeks back. We packaged up the little Barnies carefully, Gabor taking much care with the box, myself thinking we needed much more bubblewrap and string but in the end we had a nice package with clear instructions and the required Green label. We dutifully delivered the little Barnies to the Royal Academy from Canterbury via Green Street in East London.
The annual exhibition, running without interruption since 1769, features work by leading artists, Royal Academicians, and household names as well as new and emerging talent. Anyone can submit their work and, if their work is selected by the RA's panel of artists, goes on display at the Main Galleries. This year, the Architecture Room is curated by architect Peter Barber RA, and focuses on the role of the making and the hand-made in the design process.
‘Taking the Barn for a Walk’ began back in 2014 as a conversation between Gabor and myself, Kristina Kotov. As part of the 'Ghost of Barn 2b' project (scan-archived with ScanLAB Ltd) I prepared the barn to be moved – labelling, dis-mantling, assessing timbers, moving and re-assembling it in a safer location on the Ranch site – and migrated three 2m-long purlins as corpses (unusable for re-assembly) to the UK. Gabor's timber piece sat under his desk in Canterbury for some 8 years until last summer.
“Since 2014, the plan has always been to carve the drifting piece of wood into little barns, to mount them on spindly legs, to repatriate the seemingly walking creatures, and to let them roam through their indigenous landscape again. As it turned out, taking a barn for a walk takes much longer than you think.”
Gabor's blog and extended writing is here:
The Ranch catalogues on ISSUU Ranch20 Part 1 and Ranch 22Part 2 contain Gabor's specific text and images as well as each year's collective moments with further installs and writings.
The exhibition opens on 12 June 2023
Burlington House, Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD
12 June- 20 August 2023
Peter Barber's curation is further explained here. If anyone is around please stop by.