Taking the Barn for a Walk

Taking the Barn for a Walk 1_Gabor Stark

“Drawing is taking a line for a walk” (Paul Klee)

“Sculpture is taking a barn for a walk” (Gabor Stark)

Here another investigation into the capability of sculpture to come to terms with notions of place & displacement and the peripatetic nature of objects in space and time. Taking the Barn for a Walk is a project I conceived for Kristina Kotov’s LT Ranch Project Space in Lithuania. A few years ago Kristina bought a quasi-archetypal Lithuanian timber barn from one of her neighbours. The vernacular building was forensically dissected, gradually relocated, and reassembled in its new location. As part of Kristina’s Barn 2B project I was given one component of the original timber structure. The idea is to carve several scale versions of the travelling barn out of the drifting piece of wood; to mount the artefacts on long, lean legs; to repatriate them back home to Lithuania; and to let them roam through their indigenous landscape again. Up to this time I’ve only managed to build a first prototype, nicknamed Barnie, who still lives in my house. The anthropomorphic character of the sculpture became a key influence for The Friendly Army, my site-specific sculpture project at East Kent Railway in Kent.