Central to Project Gjerdeløa is the relocation of the Gjerdeløe, a 17th-century wooden cabin (løe), and the meetings it has with different people in the various events it becomes part of.
The Gjerdeløewas originally located on a mountainside in Marianne Heske's home village, Tafjord on Sunnmøre. In 1980, she borrowed it from the local farmers, Alfred and Vigdis Selboskar. Together with a local team, they dismantled the løe and loaded it onto Heske's car. She drove it all the way to Paris, where it was installed in the Centre Pompidou as part of the 11th Paris Biennale for Young Artists. After the biennale, the project was shown at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter outside Oslo, before the Gjerdeløe was returned to Tafjord, exactly one year after it was first taken down.
Heske documented Gjerdeløaand its various contexts. On the inner walls there are inscriptions from people who have been inside it, for different reasons over a period of 350 years. Heske filmed and photographed various meetings with the public at the exhibitions, and she has collected newspaper clippings with different meanings and opinions about the project. Everything becomes part of the art project that develops and creates new meanings with different people.
After more than 30 years back in place in Tafjord, Heske was finally able to buy the Gjerdeløe. She took it down and had an accurate cast made in the material synthetic resin and renewed the project with the exhibition tour-Retour at the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo in 2014. In 2018, the National Museum in Oslo turned down the proposition to acquire the løe and its cast for the collection. It ended with Heske selling both to the Tangen Collection. The Gjerdeløe and its twin are now put into a new context in close dialogue with the grain silo. Once again meeting a new audience.
