Lightening Tower
With Roberto De Pol.
Thanks to How We Dwell (Make your own residency): Adriano Valeri,Andrea Grotto, Christiano Menchini, Marco Gobbi
River Piave, Italy.
June 2013.
Lightening Tower was made as during and as a response to the How We Dwell Residency, which Bunn was invited to take part in alongside Roberto De Pol, an Italian artist. The residency took place within a forest on the banks of the River Piave in northern Italy. The aim of the residency was to see what happened if you put two artists who didn't know each other together in the forest with only rudimentary means of survival.
Handhewn with a semi-blunt axe from wood gathered along the recently flooded River Piave in northern Italy, Lightening Tower hung together with wet rope and will power, a piece of WORK.
It was pulled up with the help of the residency organisers and Roberto De Pol as the sun went down on the last day of their stay and stood for less than a week. Intended as a joke - a big wooden one - it speaks of effigies and the monument, and of course electricity pylons, which were significantly lacking during Bunn and De Pol's stay.
The idea behind the tower was partly to question why one would want to escape the modern world, with it's proliferation of handy time saving devices such as the jigsaw and the drill, which form a significant part of the modern sculptor's toolbox and were sorely missed during this residency. Lightening Tower came about as a kind of vision, a clear picture of what was missing from the landscape.
The drive to make it prevented Sam from staying totally focused on the main project, which was to build a shelter. As Roberto was similarly distracted, their shared dwelling place ended up being primarily functional and a response to the conditions that presented themselves over the 10 days of the residency. This responsive, functional aesthetic underpins much of Bunn's ouvre.