Marianne Heske

The Gjerdeløa Project, 1980–1981/2010

Art portfolio with 30 prints, 40x60 cm.

Imagine you are up at Øyen, a mountain farm in Tafjord, 500 metres above sea level. Up there in the majestic landscape stands a tiny hay barn built in 1630. Carved into the timbers are names, initials, figures and dates that witness the passing of the centuries. Next, imagine yourself at the renowned Centre Pompidou in Paris, two weeks later. The exhibition halls are bustling with people, and there – right in their midst – stands the same log hut, now as a work of art. How did this happen? The answer can be found in this text, which presents one of Norway’s foremost artists, Marianne Heske. Through images from 1980–1981 that document the realisation of the Gjerdeløa artwork, Heske takes us on a journey between nature and art.

Preparation for transport

In August 1980, Marianne Heske and a bunch of local volunteers spend six days preparing the structure for transport to Paris. The timbers are numbered and marked. Then the barn is dismantled, and the logs, foundation stones, and turf roof are sent down the steep mountainside using a cable and pulley system. Before packing the elements for transport in a delivery van, they undertake a trial reassembly in Tafjord village. It works perfectly, and the journey to Paris can begin, with Heske in the driver’s seat. After the narrow country roads of west Norway, they take a ferry to Amsterdam, and continue southwards to their destination.

A piece of Norway in Paris

One day in September 1980, two weeks after the process began, the hay barn is reassembled in a room of its own in the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Marianne Heske herself decides the size of the room and chooses white for the colour of the walls. Displayed in a little anteroom are documentation photos of the dismantling in Tafjord and the journey to Paris. At the entrance to this space are a couple monitors showing silent videos. One of them presents the barn in its natural habitat up on the mountain farm. The structure stands solid and motionless. The only movement in the video is in nature itself. The second monitor shows the real-time scene inside the main exhibition room: a live-stream of visitors strolling in and out, contemplating the barn its new context, as a work of art. As many as 140,000 people come to look at Gjerdeløa during the month or so it is on display.

Homecoming

One day in August 1981, the barn is returned to its original location in the Tafjord mountains, and with that the artwork is completed, having lasted exactly one year. 365 days and 4,800 kilometres after its journey began, the barn is back where it came from, as if nothing had happened. Along the way, Gjerdeløa had also stopped off at the Henie Onstad Art Centre at Høvikodden. But something has happened even so. Not only has the barn acquired some new markings as mementoes of its journey, in the form of French, Arabic, and Chinese inscriptions, but Marianne Heske has also set various trains of thought in motion among those who have seen the object during its tour. From the local volunteers in Tafjord, who are more or less aware of having played a part in creating an artwork, to the art aficionados of Paris. And then, in the next instance, all of us who have subsequently heard the tale of Heske’s artistic intervention.

A new view of art

In the 1980s, many Norwegians still held rather conservative views about art. Also in large parts of the professional sector, art did not stretch beyond traditional media such as painting and sculpture. But in Paris, where Marianne Heske was living at the time, attitudes to art were more open and internationally oriented. As a conceptual artwork, Gjerdeløa helped her to connect with the Parisian audience, introducing them to her home country and culture and to the people of Tafjord, who in turn gained a little insight into the progressive art scene of the French capital. Using each as a mirror for the other, Heske elevates them both in her own inimitable way. The effect of the juxtaposition is powerful.

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is the academic term that describes Marianne Heske’s work. This is an artistic direction that places the artist’s thoughts and ideas at the centre. Since its emergence in the 1960s, this approach has become fundamental to virtually all artistic practice. Marianne Heske was one of the first artists here in Norway to use conceptual strategies, and Gjerdeløa is now considered a landmark work in recent Norwegian art history. Because conceptual art often prioritises actions above concrete objects, what survives for posterity is in many cases documentation of the work or event.

The further fate of Gjerdeløa

Marianne Heske is fond of developing works based on motifs that have already figured in her art, finding new contexts in which to place them. Gjerdeløa is no exception. The images in this article consists of documentation photos that Heske took during the process in 1980–1981. Together they make up the new artwork Prosjekt Gjerdeløa / The Gjerdeløa Project, a portfolio of thirty images that Heske put together in 2010. This work was created during a period when the artist was reactivating ideas from the Gjerdeløa project. And in 2014, the hay barn was once again fetched from the mountain to be shown as part of a new artwork in a major solo exhibition at Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo. Since then, the barn has been acquired by the Kunstsilo collection in Kristiansand.

Marianne Heske (b. 1946, Ålesund) is one of Norway’s best known artists. Now living in Oslo, she studied at the National College of Art and Design, Bergen (1967–71), the École Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1971–75), the Royal College of Art, London (1975–76), and the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (1976–79).