Houseboat for Ho, Simon Starling’s modern ark

The conceptual artist Simon Starling is best known for his Turner Prize-winning Shedboatshed, 2005, for which he transformed a wooden shed into a boat and sailed it down the Rhine, before returning it back to its original form. Born in the UK but now residing in Denmark, he explores a similar concept in his latest project Houseboat for Ho, a site-specific, cross-cultural exchange combining Bolivian reed boat building and traditional Danish thatching. The result is part-boat and part-house, set within the Wadden Sea National Park (Vadehavet) in Ho, Denmark. 

What unites these two distinct skillsets is the use of the same material: reed bundles. By placing bundles at different angles, the reeds seamlessly connect the roof and the boat to create an ark-like structure, and a dialogue between two cultures in the context of the contemporary art world. 

Starling, 56, who was born in Surrey and gained a masters in fine art at Glasgow School of Art in 1992, explores the journey of people and objects (and the value of materials) through his practice. His works include The Pink Museum, 2001, a staging of objects on a bubblegum-hued backdrop referencing the history of Portuguese colonialism, and The Mahogany Pavilion, 2004, an upside-down Loch Long sailboat-turned-installation residing deep in Park Inhotim, Brazil.

The craft speaks for itself – that connects to people, because there’s an immediate empathy with it as an object

This project, commissioned by the Danish Arts Foundation and Varde Commune, began with a half-formed idea. “I was invited by a curator to visit the region five years ago,” he explains, “and witnessed the fragile salt marshes and the impact of rising sea levels on the low-lying village of Ho. In seeing the direct effects of climate change, things started to connect within me, allowing the concept of the houseboat to emerge.”

Ho’s breathtaking landscape has become popular with tourists, but residents also wanted a public artwork that would entice those passing to stay longer. “It felt really nice that the desire to create a public art installation clearly came from the locals,” Starling says. “Even during the build phase they were so supportive, checking our progress every few days.” 

Having overcome the challenges of finding the right location in an area where the land is protected – and then securing permission for the Bolivian boatbuilders to work in Denmark – the project began in August last year, and continued for eight weeks. 

Traditional reed boat-building – which is being kept alive by a few remaining communities across the world, including the Aymara and Uru boat builders on Lake Titicaca (on the border of Bolivia and Peru) – is a craft Starling threw himself into. “It was a wonderful experience,” he says, explaining how he always takes the role of the “apprentice” in the creation of a piece. 

“Even though I am bringing in experts and different skill sets, I have to be hands-on. It changes the relationship that craftspeople have to the making process; if I’m fully invested, then they will be too.” The Estebans, a well-known family in reed boat-building, made perfect partners. Their forebears worked alongside the Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in the 1970s and built ships that can still be seen in the Kon-Tiki Museum. 

While the structure of Starling’s Houseboat for Ho pays homage to traditional Bolivian boats, the curvaceous silhouette resembles a big smile. “It’s the first thing you see when entering the town – the grinning raft,” he says. The energy that radiates from the piece is something that the artist was keen to preserve while addressing the more sobering topics of climate change. “It has a positive and redemptive feel to it, as I like my work to have a poetic sensibility rather than a political one,” he continues. “There’s hope in this piece and that’s the key to its success. It isn’t browbeating people into feeling guilty but connecting viewers to the message in a playful way.”

Starling hopes the transparent construction of his boat resonates with the viewer. “There’s no secrets or hidden technology, it is what it is, and the craft speaks for itself,” he says. “That connects to people, because there’s an immediate empathy with it as an object.” 

While the Danish landscape is at risk from rising sea levels, the boatbuilders’ home of Lake Titicaca (the second largest body of fresh water in south America) is facing the opposite problem: Bolivia’s natural surface waters have dropped 39 per cent over the past 40 years, according to MapBiomas Agua. “While the locations might be geographically remote from each other, the Houseboat brings both ends of the story into focus,” Starling says. This is the closest he has come to achieving a carbon-neutral artwork – a feat for a public project of such scale. “It is a huge sink for carbon with the structure using around 15 tonnes of reed,” he adds. “Even having flown the boat builders from Lima to Copenhagen, we are still on track to achieving a very minimal carbon footprint.”

The installation is set to remain in Wadden Sea National Park for a year. However, Starling is not sure locals will want to part with it. “There have been talks with another Danish gallery but if I’m honest, I really don’t think they will let it go. There will be some maintenance needs along the way, such as replacing the hemp rope, but the thatchers are confident the roof can last for around 40 years.” 

While the project is grounded at Ho, Starling is already working on his next venture: addressing the rapidly reducing glaciers of the Alps in a nationwide project entitled Watch the glacier disappear. Located in Zuoz, Switzerland, Starling will be returning an image of the Morteratsch Glacier (originally taken by the 19th-century Swiss photographer and mountaineer Jules Beck) back to its source. With Beck’s images archived in Bern at the Swiss Alpine Museum, Starling is in the process of developing a solar-assisted transport and display device to make the 335km trip. The journey is just beginning…