Sean Lynch: Tak' Tent O' Time Ere Time Be Tint

Learning Studio
29 July – 29 August 2021
Everyday, 11am – 5pm

Online Screening and In-Conversation Event, 18 August 2021, 5pm

View the resources compiled for this event:

PDF Booklet – An Interview Between Sean Lynch and Lesley Young.

Shared Resources document with further information and links.

Tak’ Tent O’ Time Ere Time Be Tint is a new artwork by Sean Lynch commissioned by Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and Edinburgh Art Festival.

Lynch’s new project casts a spotlight on Edinburgh’s public monuments and sculptures, today subject to ongoing civic processes to have society acknowledge and understand the legacies of history. His installation at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop explores the use of folk traditions, the making of sculpture and the parables held inside monuments themselves, which can empower social change and produce a public realm implicitly open to everyone. Extensive fieldwork on this theme is seen in a new video artwork, while a new series of sculptures resuscitate the use of Coade stone, a now obsolete building material with a secretive recipe rediscovered by ESW’s technical team over the last year.

Amongst other subjects, an acute examination of the Edinburgh’s Melville Monument, an encounter with Neolithic carved stone balls and a visitation to the Aberdeen Bestiary, one of Scotland’s most important medieval illuminated manuscripts additionally feature, converging to find the critical impulses that each might bring to egalitarian thought and action today.

Accordingly, Lynch’s title, Tak’ Tent O’ Time Ere Time Be Tint is a memento mori phrase, urging those who read it to make the most of their time on earth. The phrase, along with a number of other sculptural interventions, were made and placed by builder Stanley Sutherland on Newhaven Road, a short walk from ESW.

Tak’ Tent O’ Time Ere Time Be Tint is co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. Supported by the PLACE Programme, a partnership between Edinburgh Festivals, Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland, with additional support from Culture Ireland, the University of Aberdeen, Museums Galleries Edinburgh and National Museums Scotland.

Part of our Summer Programme alongside other commissions which you can visit at ESW and events throughout the summer. There are free Exhibition Tours every Friday and Saturday at 2pm, book here…

Sean Lynch lives and works in Askeaton, Ireland. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Solo exhibitions include Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017); Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2106); Rose Art Museum, Boston (2016) and Modern Art Oxford (2014). More recent presentations of his work have occurred at Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (2020); CentroCentro, Madrid (2019), and CRAC Alsace (2019), while a major public commission for the City of Melbourne, Australia will be realised later this year. Lynch is represented by Ronchini Gallery in London and Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin. Alongside Michele Horrigan, he works at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an artist-led residency, exhibition and publication initiative situated in the west of Ireland since 2006.