Archive: Matt Hawthorn Shanty performed on Friday 21 July at Jubilee Pool, Penzance Promenade

On the Friday evening in gloomy failing light Matt was first glimpsed by visitors on the far side of the Jubilee pool working intently with nearly 200 little wooden boats. Initially it was not clear what he was doing, but by the following day it became apparent that he had carefully inscribed these perfectly made little wooden vessels, bought originally from a well-known internet auction site, with the names of houses.

Matt had originally been inspired by the story of the slum clearances in Newlyn in the thirties – roughly simultaneous with the age of the pool - that provoked a protest by their inhabitants: Newlyn residents who took their case, by boat, up to Westminster. The names of the houses written on the boats were therefore part real, part imagined by Matt as a response to the story.

The climax came when Matt, with help from family and onlookers, threw the boats onto the waves from rocks adjacent to the pool. There was a strange sense of shared catharsis and release that accompanied this moment, like the launch of a ocean liner on her maiden voyage, and though some were dashed against the rocks, most of the boats floated happily across Mounts Bay and into the distance.

Matt’s performance had a discursive and informal quality and appeared to evolve in an effortless way. Although superficially based on local history the piece seemed more about language and the process of naming, categorising and objectifying the world.