Haven

The project was a commission from Copeland Borough Council, Cumbria, for an interactive community exhibition by West Walls Studios in Whitehaven. It was partly insired by a display in the museum about the Mount Pleasant estate, a utopian housing development of the nineteenth century that rapidly degenerated into a slum, and was an opportunity to examine the notion of local identity in Whitehaven. Two hundred years of industrial decline forged a strong sense of community and mutual dependence, which is both a tribute to human resilience and also an obstacle to social, economic and geographical mobility for much of the population. Using the simplest archetypal template for a house shape, die-cut from paper, the community was encouraged to reflect on home, belonging and security through drawing and modification of the basic shape, and add their personal 'Haven' to the collective 'town.' This model of practice has subsequently been modified and adapted to the specific circumstances of Carlisle following the January 2005 floods; Somerset House, London; a summer house in the forests of Sweden; the independents section of the Liverpool Biennial; and numerous smaller scale contexts. Each project addresses issues of local identity, the role of artist as originator and facilitator, uses of archetypes and process as metaphors for larger social interactions, and the use of drawing as a fundamental impulse for expression. Through the use of archetype and process as metaphor, it is capable of endless variation depending on situation, interaction between artists and participants and between participants and the artwork. This links to the 'Relational Aesthetics' proposed by Nicolas Bourriaud as art that facilitates human relationships, a factor common to all our collaborative practice.