Gardener
26 Apr – 25 May 2019
Patricia Fleming Gallery, Glasgow
‘Gardener’ is an exhibition of new wall based works by Tessa Lynch, continuing her exploration of feminist readings of the city. It brings together a collection of drawing Lynch describes as home works, made over the last six months while at her kitchen table using techniques such as; lino printing on fabric and relief printing with collage materials, normally reserved for the planning of her sculptural works.
The works in ‘Gardener’ emerged during the artists research for an animation to depict the mining and reconstruction of an imagined city by a feminist planner. In response to ideas in Christine de Pizan’s(1), The Book of The City of Ladies, published in 1405, Lynch proposes the value of building a city of and by women and asks: How would her own ‘field of misogyny’(2) look today?
Other inspirations are drawn from ‘Non Plan’, 2018 a woodblock printing workshop designed by Lynch at Humber Street Gallery in Hull. Artist mothers worked together to deface a series of large blocks based on the plan view of household furniture. Participants carved the realities of being a creative parent, directly on to the designated images before applying ink and printing.
The resulting works for Gardener are active, imagery moves between the abstract and the figurative – body parts built upwards to imagine large stone constructions and spaghetti printed lines trace the details of an interior. Maquettes of discarded household objects could also be considered as architecture models. Lynch explores the processes and materials used in building by fabricating her own home-made plaster board, a ubiquitous material used in large qualities by the construction industry.
Pizan heralds organic beginnings: her collection of worthy heroines representing reason, rectitude and justice, ask each other for help to throw the city’s cornerstone into place; where it lands is where the city begins. – words Patricia Fleming.
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1. Christine de Pizan, born in France (c.1364 – c.1430) was one of the first professional female writers in Europe. In her most celebrated work, The Book of the City of Ladies, de Pizan tackled the subject of the cause of women. She celebrated women’s accomplishments and pointed to their equal abilities to men’s. She thus revised history by giving women a place in it and showed the elite women of her time how they could successfully navigate their way in a man’s world.
2. ‘Field of misogyny’ is a term discussed in Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies.