EDITION N째1 1
summary
call for proposals General presentation p. 6
Supported projects p. 14
Words p. 18
exhibitions Barbara Forest, Monument’s Obsolescence
works of art In Caen, Frac p. 84
In Calais, Musée des beaux-arts p. 100
In Norwich, SCVA p. 126
Aartists Jocelyn Cottencin p. 144
p. 33
Robert Foster
Sylvie Froux, Suite symbolique
Mark Edwards
p. 55
Amanda Geitner, Monument: Aftermath of war and conflict p. 69
p. 158
p. 162
Artists’ web sites and links p. 170 -
Manual, making the edition 2
p. 172
ca l l
BOOKLET 1
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Call for proposals for the Monument exhibition
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4
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The lookout tower Hypothetical beginning for the construction : 810, Calais.
Triangle At Caen, in memory of the men of the 3rd British Infantry Division who were part of the landing and died for liberation.
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TIME AND PLACE The Time and Place project (TAP) brings together five visual arts organisations who are collaborating from 2012 to 2015 on a Interreg IV France (Channel) England project, funded by the European Regional Development Fund. This involves a programme connecting the exhibition, mediation and education in contemporary art alongside the encouragement and professional development of artistic practice and the development of tools and technologies for dissemination throughout the cross-channel region and beyond.
The Monument project has been developed by four of these partners: - Le Fonds régional d’art contemporain Basse-Normandie à Caen - The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich - La Communauté d’Agglomération du Calaisis, Cap Calaisis - Le Musée des Beaux-arts de Calais
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monument
EDITION N°1
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booklet The 172 pages of Monument, edition 1 covers the n°1 genesis of the Monument project, right from the Call for contributions, launched in January 2013, to its realisation more than a year later in each of the three towns: Caen, Calais and Norwich, through exhibitions, performances, residencies, all supporting the creation of the programme. Monument edition 1 conveys the main thrust of this cross-border collaboration. It is a revue in two versions, French and English, including lists and details of works, views of the exhibitions, videos, activities, interventions and reflections which took place over these several months. This evolving publication presents more than a hundred works by the fifty artists who were invited. Produced in the form of three editions, it follows the artistic residencies and the work of those who have been particularly supported. The first edition features detailed accounts of the work of Jocelyn Cottencin, Robert Foster and Mark Edwards. Cottencin created the graphic and visual identity for Monument and working with twelve dancers and a choreographer made a 45 minute video, Monumental, which established the main lines of the work. Linked to his performance, Robert Foster published the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and Mark Edwards testifies to his discovery on a former Norfolk air-base, of vast stacks of wood which became the major subject for the photographic series Shelter. Made into four booklets, in colour and in different and independent formats: Call, Texts, Works and Artists, this first edition can be printed by you. The two subsequent editions of the revue are due to appear in June and October. The revue Monument edition 1 is part of the European project TAP (Time and Place), selected under the EU cross-border cooperation programme Interreg IV A France (Manche) – England, co-financed by the ERDF.
Barbara Forest, Sylvie Froux, Veronica Sekules, Jocelyn Cottencin 7
in 2014 the
exhibition monument will be dedicated to
the commemorations
on either side of the Channel of the hundredth anniversary of the First World War, as well as to the seventieth anniversary of the Normandy landings. However, rather than being literally devoted to the subject of the world wars, we aim to treat the theme very broadly, interrogating the subject in terms of all the legacies and ideas of war, all its vestiges, edifices, ruins and relics, and equally in terms of their veneration and their rejection. The word Monument exists in parallel and in almost the same senses in English and French. In both languages, around the idea of monument and its commemoration are associations with history, art and indeed real events and news. It may be celebrated in works of architecture, or sculpture dedicated to the commemoration of a personality or an event, or indeed, be enshrined in a building remarkable for its beauty or its antiquity, in an installation, or in a more fragile or ephemeral medium such as film or drawing. Whether associated with a funerary or public context the concept thus unites the exhibitions on both sides of the Channel. It enables us to explore and call into question a common history, tormented and complex, from the Hundred Years War to the Twentieth Century. Monument will be dedicated to a number of separate exhibitions organised by the partners. Each one will form part of the global project.
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caen, frac
basse-normandie
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booklet With reference to war, it is well understood in Caen, n°1 that the idea of Monument is evoked within the town just as much as on the nearby coast, the sites of the Allied Landings of 6 June 1944. The group of landing beaches from Ouistreham to Arromanches are as much places of memory as are the numerous small museums dedicated to the subject, the exposed tanks, as well as the hidden bunkers, all being monuments to the soldiers of the British, Canadian and American allies. La Pointe du Hoc remains as American territory and is a symbolic place. The American and German cemeteries, contrasting as they are, exist as monuments in themselves. The artists Diller and Scofido published the book: Visite aux armées: tourismes de guerre (Back to the Front: Tourisms of War) with the FRAC Basse Normandie in 1994. The town itself, bombed by the allies and 70% destroyed, nevertheless preserves some 40 churches, which acted at times as refuges for the populations and received (on the other hand) a very small number of monuments; indicated by the monument of Anna Quinquaud, 1962, which commemorates the 19 days of the battle of Caen; the work Phénix (Phoenix), 1954, of the sculptor Louis Leygue, situated at the entrance of the University, which marks the renovation of the place and of the town. Numerous little simple and decorative commemorative plaques are distributed throughout the town and pay homage to the allied forces, to the French combatants, or also, to the riflemen and prisoners. The recent public commission at the heart of the town, La Caravane, a work by the contemporary artist Joep van Lieshout, inaugurated 2013, creates through its 11 figures, a homage which is equally dedicated to the living in times of war. The year 2014, the year of the 100th anniversary of the 1914-1918 war and the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings gives the opportunity for a number of commemorative ceremonies.
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calais, musĂŠe
des beaux-arts
In Calais the monument exists almost exclusively in relation to war. Few buildings survived bombings by English allies of 1940. The old town of Calais has lost 80% of its architecture. Among the remains are the Tour du Guet, the ancient lighthouse, small remains of Notre Dame de Calais, the monumental church in Tudor style in course of restoration and almost complete. Monumental and traditional sculpture is largely confined to parks and public spaces. The town is remarkable for its numerous fortifications from the Ancien Regime, and for its bunkers of the 20th century, mostly in ruins. They punctuate the town, the beach, the banks of the canals. Of the defensive structures constructed between 1940 and 1942 by the Germans for protecting against attack by the English, only one survives in use. It contains the museum to the memory of the 39-45 war, camouflaged behind the trees of a park. Defensive architecture has over the centuries transformed the countryside around Calais. The bunkers within this frontier town by the sea impose a strong presence in spite of their ruinous state. Evidence of its dominance by war for a whole epoch, the bunker of the Pas de Calais was erected as a central point of the defensive and offensive strategy for the whole Nazi war without ever having served as such. Today the bunkers are rehabilitated as a war museum, and the outline structures as well as the firing shafts are much visited by school-children and tourists. Another Calais monument, the Burghers of Calais of 1888, recalls the tumultuous history of the Franco-British conflicts during the Hundred Years War. In effect, Rodin chose to represent an episode from the Chronicles of Froissart, depicting six Calais men who sacrificed themselves in order to liberate the town which had been under siege for several months by the forces of the English king Edward III.
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communauté
d’agglomération du calaisis,
jardin des arts
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Aims of the educational residency A residency programme relevant to the programme ‘Jardin des Arts is organised under the remit ofartistic and cultural education for a public of children, adolescents and young people of school age. It depends on an artist being fully available for 3 or 4 months as well as ensuring an importantdissemination of his or her existing work, whether in a dedicated space or not. The outcome of the residency can be a proposal for creation of a new work, its making resulting from the process of encounter between the artist and the region. For the resident artist it is particularly important to engage in an educational approach which gives explicit access to the further understanding of the research process, and to the creative reflection whichleads to the work (reflection, experimentation, and the process of making). This making evident of the process can take many forms in terms of interventions or actions. Such a laboratory of artistic education might lead up to well defined territory, however, its actions and events need to be prepared for an eventual relationship with many different educational and pedagogic offices and clients. They also need to be prepared and negotiated with the bodies in charge of the cultural organisations embedded in the region where the artist is temporarily situated. These actions are intended to lead, during school hours or after school, to the objective to permit a large number of children, adolescents and young people (and beyond to their families) to acquire first hand experience with the creation of original works of art. These actions can take place equally in schools, social centres, leisure centres, cultural organisations, or in public spaces, or in any other site which is deemed appropriate by the artist and his or her local partners. 11
Aims and objectives: - To permit a great number of children, adolescents and young people to learn about the creation of contemporary works of art in the course of an encounter with a powerful artistic intervention, in connection with a network of cultural spaces. - To develop the critical faculties of these children, adolescents and young people through discussion, exchanges of ideas, talks on the works. - To contribute to the cultural and artistic development of the region and particularly towards a coherent artistic education, which is community focussed, and integrating the energies of the many contributors. - To contribute in this way to reducing the inequalities of access to art and culture.
sainsbury centre
for visual arts,
university of east anglia, norwich
Two sites will be used in Norwich for the Monument project, one of them with a direct relationship to the First World War. In the very centre of the city, the City Hall stands just above the market-place (which is the oldest continuing market in England). Below City Hall and built in 1938, as part of the same scheme, the memorial gardens sit between the City Hall and the market, originally intended as an ‘oasis of peace’. At the heart of the gardens is a memorial to the 1914-18 war by Sir Edwin Lutyens. A cavernous concrete space directly beneath the memorial – known as the Undercroft - has recently been used as storage for the adjacent market stalls but is now being used for contemporary art installations which are in broad sympathy with its original purpose. That legacy, plus its challenging and somewhat industrial aesthetic together with 12
immediate access to a diverse city-centre population, are the EDIparticular opportunities offered by this site. TION N°1 Work selected for this space is being shown in the MAY 2014 booklet summer of 2014 concurrently with the Monument exhibition n°1 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. This is a gallery and centre for teaching and research on the campus of the University of East Anglia, 2 miles from Norwich city centre, in Norfolk, East Anglia. The Centre is housed in a purpose-built, grade II listed building designed by Norman Foster in 1978 and subject to further expansion and refurbishment by the architect – most recently with the redesign of the temporary exhibition spaces in 2013. Core to the activities of the Centre is the World Art collection of Sir Robert and Lisa Sainsbury which spans some 5,000 years, including work from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Pacific and renowned for its holdings of works by 20th century artists such as Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon.
the open submission
process for monument allowed the partners to have an overview of current artistic production that related to Monument themes. More than 160 applications were received from across Europe and more than thirty artists were selected to exhibit. The works will be on show in either one, two or three venues between 21 February and 16 November 2014. All will be reproduced in Monument Revue. A small number of artists have been commissioned to create new work, in response to selected artists’ career development and their existing bodies of work. Other artists have been selected for residencies and education work.
13
commissions
for monument
Jocelyn Cottencin’s production, Monumental, was supported by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich ; FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Calais. He was commissioned to create the graphic and visual design of the exhibition and digital magazine. Léa Le Bricomte was selected for a residency at the Jardin des Arts in Calais, to work with local schools and develop her creative practice, supported by Cap Calaisis and Museum of Fine Arts, Calais. Laurent Sfar was also selected for a residency at the Jardin des Arts in Calais, to work with local schools and develop his creative practice, supported by Cap Calaisis and Museum of Fine Arts, Calais. Carole Fékété’s production, Les Armures, was supported by FRAC Basse-Normandie and Museum of Fine Arts, Calais. Gilles Saussier’s production was supported by Museum of Fine Arts, Calais. Antoine Durand’production was supported by Museum of Fine Arts, Calais and Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich. Didier Vivien’s production was supported by Museum of Fine Arts, Calais and Sainsbury Centre for Visuals Arts, Norwich. Andrew Burton’s installation was supported by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Paul Pouvreau’s installation was supported by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Becky Shaw’s residency was supported by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. The cost of production of Mark Edwards’s work was supported by the Arts Council of England and Metro Imaging. The production and performance for the Voice Project was supported by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and the Arts Council of England. Boris Chouvellon’production was supported by FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen and Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich 14
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Jocelyn Cottencin Monumental 2014, HD video 47’, colour, sound Performed by Yaïr Barelli, Nuno Bizarro, Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Volmir Cordeiro, Madeleine Fournier, Matthieu Doze, Yves-Noël Genod,
Elise Olhandeguy, Carole Perdereau, Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz, Loïc Touzé. Courtesy of the artist. Graphic and visual design of the exhibition and digital magazine, creation of a specific typeface, 2014.
Léa Le Bricomte has visited a pigeonfancier’club, starting point of her residency’s Project.
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Gilles Saussier Sinea, Photographic Installation.
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Carole Fékété Making off : Les Armures [Armour], in the Army Museum, Paris, 2014. © Gabriella Cseh.
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Didier Vivien 1914 [Cold Memories] 2018, 4 albums of 40 x 30cm, 72 pages each (detail). © Didier Vivien. Antoine Durand Monuments Pacifistes [Pacifist Monuments], collection of 6 ‘postcard-style’ photographs.
17
formal
hubris
consolat
permanence
Fr/Eng
Words exchanged about Monument’Project
resolution
funéraire figure/
community
confidence/
personnalité
death
commande
dignity
gloire/héros/
génération
remem
triomphe
commémoration
souvenir
sc
perpétuer
édifice
imposant
architecture 18
public
remarqu
milit
so
co
lity
icon
tion
war
indurance
official
cold
loss
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memorial
stable
consensus
MAY 2014
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folly
inoffensive
/certainty respect
y
concrete
statue
relic
mbrance
faith
tragedy grand
power
commemoration
culpture impact
memory monolith
establishment
shared experience
uable/visible
taire/guerre
olid
ompassion
masculine
inheritance 19
20
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Mains (Hands) Memorial statue landing June 6, 1944, Caen.
City Hall (1936-1938), Norwich. One of the finest municipal buildings of the inter-war period in England.
21
22
a monuDr Veronica Sekules Deputy director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, head of resaerch and education
ment is a warning.
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The root of the word monument is monere from the Latin verb ‘to remind or to warn’. A monument exists both as a reminder to society of notable events, peoples, qualities, but also as a caution or admonishment, reminding us of the consequences of dire events such as war, the recklessness or risk-taking of any aspect of conflict. Its imagery can instil a sense of hope or of foreboding. It is interesting that the word monster also stems from the same Latin root.
a monument
celebrates
heroes.
By the story it illustrates, a monument can celebrate the kind of courage, self-effacing duty, or super-human strength of a hero, as a lesson to onlookers to learn from, or be in awe of such exemplary behaviour. It can remind society of a hero’s bravery and why he or she deserves to be remembered.
23
a monument
marks outstanding achievements.
A monument can represent triumph itself. A monument rewards and celebrates a genius of science or the arts, someone whose achievements need to be noted for posterity. A famous explorer or someone who has made discoveries may be worthy of renown and commemoration.
a monument stands for
endurance.
A monument is a lasting artefact or statement which perpetuates memory. It can itself stand for tenacity, to celebrate the qualities of persistence which single out the people who are not diverted from some greater purpose in service of society. The material or form of a monument, as colossal statue, megalith or cenotaph can supply enduring qualities of scale, weight, relevance.
a monument
represents values.
There are so many values which a monument can represent or personify. Normally the values which a monument stands for will be virtuous ones which stand as models for society, such as virtue itself, hope, liberty, faith, and those values of comradeship and humanity which underpin a good society. 24
a monument
commemorates
death.
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Tombs often carry effigies, which can be moving tributes to the dead recording their physique and attributes. The dead can be remembered as heroes of war, those who died in service of their country. In a Christian context there are, or used to be, many images of martyrs, saints, and those who have sacrificed themselves for their beliefs or for the greater good of society.
a monument
marks bravery.
While its purpose might be to warn, a monument’s commemoration of a brave act can also inspire through the good example of someone who puts him or herself to the ultimate test for the sake of the common good. It can celebrate the act of resistance, which has in real time to operate under cover. Through the monument such risk-taking can be openly acknowledged and given due respect.
a monument
perpetuates
mourning.
A figure which openly shows the weeping of sadness and loss can immediately strike a common cause in the viewer, making public an emotion which can be difficult and private for individuals to bear. The state of grief can often be represented in monuments in churches and in village and city streets through figures weeping for their dead, or simply through lists of names of the cherished departed. 25
a monument
makes history.
A significant moment can be commemorated in perpetuity though a monument. Historical monuments connect certain themes and genres, battles and significant personalities being more common than others. Monuments with inscriptions can be historical documents in themselves, marking the calendar or noting special categories of events or people.
a monument
distinguishes place.
It is almost obligatory for there to be a monument in the main public square of any town; in front of the railway station; placed on a rock at sea near a harbour. Monuments are often taken for granted as signifiers of certain qualities and places, and themselves will act as markers of territory, as their own signs. They may act to commemorate a big event such as a fire which once obliterated the place which the monument now serves to mark.
a monument
consolidates local culture.
There might be a monument which is distinctive to one place only, created by an artist as their own expression of sense of place and which becomes an important emblem associated with this particular site. The commissioning of a monument is one way in which a locality can be made quite distinctive, even to the extent of its economy being transformed.
26
a monument
promotes
western
classical
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civilisation.
There is a prevalence in western culture, especially among pre20th century monuments, of classical themes, such as personifications of virtues and muses; legends and myths of Greek and Roman gods. Classical themes entailed the invention of subjects which transcended time, which displayed learning, and which required classical knowledge for their interpretation.
a monument
reinforces
religious
belief.
Monuments to belief are almost exclusively in Christian contexts: churches are full of monumental effigies to the dead, often in prayer, as perpetual reminders of devotion. Images of saints, angels, martyrs and biblical figures are posed in tabernacles and niches around the buildings, as corporeal representatives of holy scriptures and piety. Headstones in graveyards both commemorate the dead and act as public tributes to the Christian belief in afterlife.
27
a monument
honours leaders.
One of the major reasons for monuments to be erected in prominent sites is to honour society’s leaders: those people who stand out for their achievements or status or power. These people might be patricians who are born to leadership, politicians who are elected or who assume leadership. Then there are those people who initiate great foundations or events, who mark great beginnings, who are remembered.
a monument
exposes nudity.
Even though a monument may actually be celebrating a heroic story, personifying a virtue, or recalling a classical myth, it can often be an excuse for displaying nude flesh. Many are the 19th or early 20th century public building facades adorned with naked women. But the muscle-bound figure of the male combatant, or hero, or classical god striking a pose, is also a common occurrence. It seems odd to have naked flesh displayed in stone so freely in public contexts that we take it for granted. It goes practically unnoticed.
28
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30
The project TAP has been selected within the frame of the INTERREG IV A France (Channel) – England cross-border European cooperation programme, part-financed by the ERDF.
ex hi bi tio ns
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Presentation of the 3 exhibitions
31
32
about Barbara Forest Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Calais
the
exhibition
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we live in
an era in which
contemporary art largely eschews traditional
monumental forms, and yet
the act of commemoration has never been more loaded with meaning, or the political appeals to the collective memory more frequent. Back in 1978, in his article on ‘Collective Memory’ in the New Historical Encyclopaedia, Pierre Nora remarked that “history is now written under the glare of collective memory,” seeking to “compensate for the historical rootlessness of contemporary society and its anxieties about the future by celebrating the past, a past which then takes on a form it never previously had.” The term ‘lieu de mémoire’ (which translates roughly as ‘memorial site’) officially entered the French language in 1993, designating any object – concrete or abstract – which does not deserve to be forgotten. Before this concept was enacted into law, various veterans of the Resistance, former soldiers, Holocaust survivors and historians had eloquently defended the idea of our “duty to remember”, to ensure that we never lost sight of history’s great dramas. This concept is often conflated with the practice of honouring the memory of soldiers and victims, a confusion which owes much to 33
the misplaced assimilation of two discrete notions: history and memory. While the former might be defined as the academic pursuit of shared truths, the latter is far more subjective and open to interpretation. Under no circumstances should the “duty to remember” be allowed to overshadow the historical complexities of war: its fluctuating fortunes, its propaganda, its battles, its mutinies… After the Second World War the Germans invented a new word, reflecting the new ambiguity besetting the idea of monuments and distinguishing between two forms of commemoration: the term ‘Denkmal’ is used to refer to a monument to the memory of a positive event, while ‘Mahnmal’ is a monument which serves to remind us of a tragedy. Didier Vivien presents a sort of reverse history of memorials, told over the course of hundreds of photographs. Starting at the facility in Vimy where unexploded bombs from the First World War are stored, the artist visited different military cemeteries and explored the battle sites around Arras as they are now (agricultural land, roads, industrial zones, retail parks, allotments etc.). His approach rejects all forms of political and economic instrumentalisation, while also avoiding the twin temptations of sentimentalism and voyeurism. A certain morbid industry has nonetheless sprung up around the trend for ‘dark tourism’ (visiting the sites of wars or catastrophes). There are now specialist agencies organising group tours of the parts of New Orleans devastated by Katrina, while some venture as close as possible to the sites of the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters. You can even pay to get a closer look at the shipwrecked Costa Concordia, or wander around Ground Zero, not to mention Rwanda, Cambodia, Kigali or Auschwitz. Régis Fabre’s photograph showing a road sign from the town with directions to the campsite and leisure facilities provokes an inescapable sense of uneasiness. And yet the paradox remains: the monuments in our own towns honouring our heroes and our fallen, considerably less sensational, are neglected by younger generations and are therefore in the process of becoming invisible. Valérie Collart offers a meditation upon this sad reality, symbolically destroying a war memorial in Nice by physically degrading the photograph.
34
Throughout Monument, the featured artists examine EDIthe place of commemoration in history, art and current TION N°1 affairs. The very idea of what constitutes a monument is MAY 2014 booklet here explored: architectural works or sculptures intended to n°2 preserve the memory of a person or event, as well as buildings which are simply remarkable for their beauty or historical significance, and accorded symbolic value as a result. The etymological roots of the word can be traced to the Latin verb moneo, which can mean to think of, to warn or even to inspire. In any case its meaning stretches much further than that of ‘memorial’, a term reserved exclusively for monuments which honour the memory of someone or something. The idea of homage, in some ways an anachronism, has come to occupy a unique position in contemporary art. Certainly such inter-textual references more often evoke other artists than military or political heroes, and are just as likely to be derisive as they are to be celebratory. Michel Aubry conveys his respect for Tatlin, Rodchenko, Dürer and Le Corbusier, but his reflections on the clothing of Joseph Beuys and Ernest Jünger seem to maintain a certain distance from their subjects. Laurent Sfar presents a reconstruction of the lost Le Corbusier house of Pessac, celebrating the original spirit of this architectural project before its residents got involved. Rémy Jacquier presents models dedicated to Charlie Parker, arranged to evoke a sense of complex, intricate rhythm and featuring lines, repetitions and convoluted forms which capture something of the spirit of Parker’s sax playing. In the works focusing on Calais, the monuments explored are almost exclusively relics of the war. Many historic buildings were destroyed during the allied bombardment in 1940: only around 80% of the old Calais survived the war. Among these remains is the Tour de Guet, a former lighthouse, and the monumental Church of Notre Dame de Calais, a fine example of the Tudor style which is currently undergoing restoration work.
35
Léa Le Bricomte Flag, ribbons from various military medals, wall support, 2013, 150 x 90 cm. © Léa Le Bricomte, Courtesy Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris. ©Adagp, Paris, 2014.
36
Boris Chouvellon Style Reconstruction - La Tour, 2012, sections of concrete fencing. Production 2Angles Flers. Courtesy Boris Chouvellon.
Patrick Tosani Hauteville, 1983, colour photo (C-print), 120 x 157 cm. © Patrick Tosani, Adagp 2014. Courtesy Patrick Tosani & Galerie In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc, Paris.
Valérie Collart Monument I, II et III, 2010, standard print eroded with sandpaper 30 x 20 cm.
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John Cornu La mort dans l’âme [Sick at Heart] 2012, butcher’s blocks, black paint and wax, various sizes. Courtesy of the artist, Ricou Gallery, Brussels and Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris.
Carole Fékété Les statues – Jardin du Château de Versailles [Status – Gardens of the Château de Versailles], 2005-2006, photographic prints – matt framing, 240 x 120 cm. © Carole Fékété.
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38
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John Cornu La mort dans l’âme [Sick at Heart] 2012, butcher’s blocks, black paint and wax, various sizes. Courtesy of the artist, Ricou Gallery, Brussels and Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris. Laurent Sfar Modèle Ile de France, 2000 – 2008, model using various materials, 13 x 169.5 x 169.5 cm. Modèle Ile de France (#2), 2001, model using various materials. 13 x 27 x 27 cm. Modèle Ile de France (#8), 2003, model using various materials, 13 x 45 x 45 cm.
Left: Virginie Maillard Department of Justice, C-print photographic print on composite panel, 54 x 80 cm. Girls, C-print photographic print on composite panel 54 x 80 cm. Stock Market, C-print photographic print on composite panel 54 x 80 cm. Series: Anamnesis Land. © Virginie Maillard.
Right: Leo Fabrizio Furkapass, 2002, colour photograph on aluminium backing, 80 x 100 cm. Fort Pré-Giroud, 2000, colour photograph on aluminium backing, 80 x 100 cm. Collection FRAC Basse-Normandie.
39
Monumental sculpture in the traditional sense is largely restricted to parks, large squares and the port. Rodin’s monument to the Burghers of Calais remains easily the most famous example. And yet the city is dotted with other historic edifices, including various Ancien Régime fortifications and, of course, the bunkers of the midtwentieth century, most now standing in ruins. They are scattered throughout Calais, from the beaches to the banks of the canals. Of all the famous blockhaus bunkers, constructed by the German occupiers in 1940-1942 in order to repel Allied assaults, only one is still in use. It now houses the 1939-1945 Memorial Museum, tucked away amidst the trees in the corner of a park. In his 2002 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art and Lacemaking, David Jourdan reproduced this bunker in miniature and used it as an item of furniture. The network of bunkers which covers the Pas de Calais region were a key defensive and offensive asset in the Nazis’ ‘total war’ strategy. Ultimately, however, they saw little use. Virginie Maillard’s photographic manipulations turn these military installations into dens of pleasure or administrative mundanity, adorned with gaudy neon signs: ‘Girls’, ‘Coffee Shop’, ‘Marriage Center’. Leo Fabrizio photographed some 400 bunkers spread across Switzerland, fascinated by the camouflage effects which allow them to blend into the landscape or assimilate elements of the vernacular architecture. Sylvie Ungauer’s Prêt à Porter features ten scale models of real bunkers, transformed into ‘Bunker-Burqas’ – a form of wearable architecture. She cites the influence of Paul Virilio: “For me the air-raid shelters were symbols of man’s anguish, and the normative systems which are constantly reproduced by the city, our cities, urban life. These bunkers were anthropomorphic, their shapes based on that of the human body: the result was the blockhaus.” The constraints of conflict can profoundly alter our way of life, as well as the spaces in which we live. As Virilio puts it: “As soon as armour comes into use we begin to see analogies with fortifications: we use the term ‘apron wall’ to describe the protective wall surrounding a keep, and ‘bastion’ to refer to the breastplate of a knight’s armour.” Carole Fékété’s group portrait Les Armures is a clash of centuries, where medieval might takes on airs of science fiction, with a nod to school photos and other group images. With a mischievous sense of humour Fékété constructs an improbable family portrait of 40
ghostly figures: proud, silent warriors, frozen in time. The intimate relationship between architecture and the body is also EDITION N°1 explored in Micha Laury’s drawings. The Israeli bunkers MAY 2014 booklet which played such an important role in his time in the army n°2 had a profound impact of Laury’s perception of living spaces, reduced to a strict minimum in the form of a black box. In John Cornu’s work the black box in question is a butcher’s block, scarred by thousands of knife cuts, imprinted forever with memories of flesh and bone. And when the bunker takes the form of a modern house, as in the sculptures of Matthew Miller and Laurent Sfar, we are once again confronted with Paul Virilio’s observations on the administration of fear, and the obsession with security which has transformed our homes into bomb shelters and surveillance zones.
monument
considers at structures
confronted with the spectre of
obsolescence, deliberately destroyed
or undermined by the unflinching gaze of photography, challenged and reappraised. The works on show here focus on sites and structures which perpetuate the memory of conflicts, examining the meaning and status of these buildings, ruins and relics in the modern age: from veneration to abandonment, or re-appropriation. By commemorating victories as well as tragedies, the twentieth century saw the concept of ‘the ruin’ removed from the rarefied spheres of art and heritage and thrust into the political spotlight. In the 19th century ruins appealed to the Romantic spirit, providing 41
a touch of exoticism which fascinated early photographers. But ultimately this iconography began to wear thin: too many reflections on the march of time and the fall of empires inevitably turn to cliché. Albert Speer advised Hitler to take into account the appearance the monuments of the Third Reich in a ruined state, imagining these buildings in the same lineage as the ruins of ancient Rome. Between the wars, Auguste Perret campaigned to keep Reims cathedral in its ruined state, leaving the damage of the Great War there for all to see. He imagined the gothic façade protected by a concrete casing: “I would have done as little as possible to alter the marks left by the war, I would have striven to preserve this cathedral as a wonderful, moving witness to that conflict.” “We should not have hidden the traces of the war, memories fade all too quickly.” Wolf Vostell replies to this statement with a certain sense of irony, encasing a car in concrete and giving it the appearance of a bunker, showing this totem of consumerism stripped of all poetic associations. Not all ruins meet the same fate. Reflecting on the Allies’ carpet-bombing of German cities, W.G. Sebald was taken aback by the apathy and amnesia demonstrated by the population. This collective paralysis saw the Germans wipe these smoking ruins from the map and start again, glossing over the catastrophic destruction of their historic cities and the crimes of the Nazis in one fell swoop. In Sebald’s view, “this total destruction was not seen as an aberration, but rather as the first step towards successful reconstruction.” Aerial photographs of these devastated cityscapes confront us with the realities of war, challenging our understanding of the very concept of ruins. The images of Cologne Cathedral, miraculously spared by the bombs, are particularly striking. The series of photographs by Rémy Marlot and Ariane Chopard shows the façades of the cathedral in tight close-up, shot from low angles. The reverent framing and use of blue play up the romanticism and sacred beauty of this religious monument. As part of the rebuilding efforts at Ground Zero, some of the debris from the Twin Towers was put to a surprising use. A warship, baptised the USS New York in memory of the victims of the September 11 attacks, was partly fabricated from 42
steel salvaged from the World Trade Center, and is now used in EDIthe fight against terrorism. Completed in 2009, eight tonnes of TION N°1 the steel which makes up the ship’s bow came from the Twin MAY 2014 booklet Towers. The USS New York’s motto is ‘Never Forget’, while its n°2 crest features a stylised outline of the towers and a phoenix rising from the ashes. It is this sort of symbolic imagery that Pascal Bauer references in his sculpture. For the piece presented in this exhibition he took an arrogant, delusional proclamation made by a Greek politician as crisis paralysed his country and carved it into marble. The concept of ruins thus underwent a paradigm shift in the twentieth century. From the meditative melancholy of ruins as painted by Caspar David Friedrich, crumbling away under the ravages of time, ruins were now confronted with the notion of entropy, the mechanism that suspends or even eradicates time and its linearity, as artist Robert Smithson defines it. All construction carries the seed of its destruction, and every building is a ruin in waiting. Discussing Monument 7 for V. Tatlin, a neon piece by Dan Flavin, Smithson opines that: “Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future. Instead of being made of natural materials, such as marble, granite and other stones, the new monuments are made of artificial materials like plastic, chrome, and electric lights. They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. They are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds, rather than representing the long spaces of centuries.” Although made of concrete, a famously solid and durable material, Boris Chouvellon’s Style Reconstruction - Tower is a monument to entropy. When not on display it is dismantled, stored outdoors and hardly even sheltered from the elements. When erected the tower is barely functional, becoming more of an outmoded decoration.
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Sylvie Ungauer Bunker-burqa, 10 structures in felt and metal with various display supports: from 1.6 m high and 1.1 m wide. 10 metal frames, 1.6 m high with 30 cm base, 2012.
44
Carole Fékété Les Armures [Armour], 2014, inkjet print, 280 x 550 cm, a coproduction of FRAC Basse-Normandie, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, Musée de l’Armée, Paris and the artist.
EDITION N°1
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booklet n°2
Michel Aubry Lustre [Chandelier], 1914 – 2002, stake posts from trench network, sardinian canes, sixteen silver reeds. 160 cm x diameter 160 cm. Galerie Eva Meyer. Tables, 1914 – 2003, stake posts from trench network, objects collected in Alsace from WWI battlefields. I. Récipients [Recipients] c. 100 x 260 x 160cm. II. Munitions. c. 100 x 180 x 140 cm. III. Outils [Tools] c. 100 x 140 x 110 cm.
IV. Cuisine et campement [Kitchen and camp] c. 100 x 170 x 110 cm. V. Réseaux de tranchée [Trench network]. ca. 100 x 220 x 160 cm. Five tables arrange in a rosette formation: c. 400 x 360 cm. Galerie Eva Meyer.
Patrick Tosani Hauteville, 1983, colour photo (C-print), 120 x 157 cm. © Patrick Tosani, Adagp 2014. Courtesy Patrick Tosani & Galerie In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc, Paris.
Valérie Collart Monument I, II et III, 2010, standard print eroded with sandpaper 30 x 20 cm.
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Michel Aubry Le manteau d’Ernst Jünger [Ernst Jünger’s Coat], 2011, wool, fur and embroidery. Galerie Eva Meyer. Mise en musique du pantalon de Beuys après le crash [Musical accompaniment to Beuys’ trousers after the crash], 1944 – 2009, sheepskin, leather and canvas trousers, Bakelite tubes and reeds. Collection FRAC Basse-Normandie.
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Mise en musique de la combinaison de vol de Beuys avant le crash [Musical accompaniment to Beuys’ flight suit before the crash], 1942 – 2003, flight suit on hanger, cotton undersuit on hanger, 170 x 65 x 10 cm. Collection FRAC BasseNormandie.
Léa Le Bricomte Drippings Medals, sculpture (augmented military medals and ribbons), 2012, 180 x 223 cm Free Riders, sculpture (9 x 18-pounder shells with skateboard wheels). 2011-2012, © Léa Le Bricomte. Courtesy Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris. © Adagp, Paris, 2014.
EDITION N°1
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booklet n°2
Laurent Sfar Excavation, 2007 / 2010, acrylic resin, paper, wood, flocking, 142 x 55 x 68 cm. La forme du doute [The shape of Doubt], 2010, inkjet print on120g paper displayed in a case of 94.5 x 120 x 4 cm.
Wolf Vostell Circulation bloquée [Blocked traffic], print, 1974, Musée des Beaux-Arts, gift from the artist, 1983, inv. no. 983.13.1. © F. Kleinefenn. © Adagp, Paris, 2014.
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The very nature of monuments is subject to change. From permanent and indestructible, they are shown to be fallible and perishable. Fortresses and bunkers which outlive their use become symbols of abandonment. At most, and only in a few rare cases, they may be restored and converted into museums or heritage centres. Others are abandoned to the plants or the ocean, gradually fading away. Some flags meet the same fate. Although more heraldic symbols than monuments, flags are nonetheless monuments by association, images and manifestations of past victories. Artists have long been drawn to such symbols, rich in connotations. Boris Chouvellon presents photographs of 15 torn flags, with the beleaguered air of wounded soldiers abandoned to their fate. Léa Le Bricomte stitches together dozens of medal ribbons to create a sort of imaginary, utopian, multicultural, multinational flag.
political regimes
come and go, even if man’s desire for symbolic
representations of
his power remains,
meaning that all monuments are ultimately doomed to obsolescence. American critic Rosalind Krauss’ book Passages, a History of Sculpture from Rodin to Smithson opens with a description of the first scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1928 film on the Bolshevik Revolution October: Ten Days That Shook the World, in which the statue of Tsar Alexander III is dismantled by a rope-wielding crowd. While the heroes of the revolution are flesh-and-blood humans, the Romanov dynasty’s sudden downfall is symbolised by the destruction of this monumental sculpture. For Krauss, this image is an allegory for modern sculpture’s 48
rejection of history. She places Rodin at the centre of this EDIartistic revolution, taking the lead in liberating sculpture from TION N°1 the shackles of ideology and kindling the bristling antagonism MAY 2014 booklet between sculpture and monuments. And yet toppling a statue n°2 does not always mean death to the regime. On the contrary, Liane Lang’s miniature bronze sculptures demonstrate how one totalitarian regime can swiftly replace another, with the old imperial statues melted down and reused in statues of Lenin. Reproducibility and vulnerability, even a tendency towards disappearance: are these now the true defining properties of a monument? Various artists have turned their imaginations to creating works that challenge preconceptions of what constitutes a monument, works which might be described as ‘anti-monuments’. Jochen Gerz was a pioneer in this respect, with two works which achieved significant attention: Monument against Fascism (1986) and The Invisible Monument (1990). Both solicited the participation of students or passers-by, encouraging the public to play an active role in the construction of our collective memory. While striving to create a memorial which would radically break with the traditional codes of monumentality, Félix Gonzales-Torrès remembered a fascinating memorial he once saw in Canada: by the side of the road, at a vantage point offering a spectacular view of the landscape, was a simple plaque affixed to a small pedestal and bearing the message: “This view is dedicated to all those who died in World War II.” The artist decided to create a series of works which truly put the spectator at the heart of the experience, hinting at meaning but open to interpretation, and ultimately likely to disappear. The resulting pieces featured sweets and prints which invited interaction, participation and interpretation, thus fulfilling what Gonzales-Torrès considers to be the most important function of public art. Intimately bound to the artist’s own life and favourite causes, these piles of objects nonetheless respected a somewhat traditional definition of what a monument should stand for: “the commemoration of events, the preservation of memory, the material representation of the intangible and the inspiration of edifying emotions.” These sweets and posters were in many ways 49
reminiscent of religious offerings, but also of souvenirs and keepsakes. Susan Stewart compares them to objects of desire: “these souvenirs shrink the concept of the monument and the three-dimensional into miniature forms which can enter into and become part of the body, and two-dimensional representations (postcards and photographs) which can be easily encompassed by the individual’s field of vision.” These souvenirs thus represents a symbolic transition from the public sphere to the private sphere. Antoine Durand’s idea of printing 1 000 postcards of six monuments to peace photographed in France, and Tom Molloy’s Monument comprising 1059 old black-andwhite postcards of WWI memorials, are united by a shared desire to express the emotional, sentimental and social dimension of public monuments. A number of contemporary artists have sought to transport the monumental into the private sphere through miniaturisation or appropriation of monumental imagery, initiating in the process a new relationship with the subject, with autobiography and with photography. One historical artefact has served as a model and inspiration in this respect: the scarves worn by parachutists, and printed with maps of the territory they were attempting to negotiate. Carole Fékété photographed one surviving example, now on display at Calais’ WWII Museum. The scarf appears to still bear the traces of its wearer’s sweat, or some other fluid which has caused the colours to run. Since 1984 Christian Boltanski has been examining his own past in parallel with other people’s stories, producing a series of illuminated photographic installations titled Monuments. The series begins with an enlarged reproduction of an old class photo. The artist himself cannot remember the names of his old classmates, who have faded into anonymity. The photographs are framed and wreathed in garlands of light, conferring upon the images a certain sacred aura and transforming the gallery into a shrine to this distant childhood, forgotten and perhaps forever lost. Patrick Tosani encases miniature paper monuments in ice, while Michel Aubry collects objects from battlefields, just as he did as a child. Deborah Gardner’s monumental structure is made up of pillows, and 50
Régis Fabre transforms a wooden bed into a sentry box. EDISylvie Ungauer presents hats inspired by WWII bunkers, TION N°1 ‘Bunker-Burqas’ worn by dancers for a special performance. MAY 2014 booklet Gillard and Rivet sculpt derided, vandalised monuments n°2 out of soap, and Michel Aubry presents a selection of unique costumes. Images of the body and intimacy are thus frequently invoked and explored, a reminder of both the importance of figurative representation in monumental sculpture and also the crucial requirement for a monument to provoke empathy and invite interaction.
parody is a common
feature of the anti-
monument. Claes Oldenburg’s 1970 piece
Lipstick presented a giant red lipstick set atop a tank as a sort of replacement turret: does this qualify as a monument? By bringing a sense of playfulness to their exploration of the monumental, artists do not seek to belittle war but rather to take up one of its inescapable features: absurdity. The works presented here by Léa Le Bricomte and Pascal Bauer incorporate an element of humour. Léa Le Bricomte arranges dozens of bullets to form a mandala, adds wheels to shells to create bizarre skateboards, and stitches together medals in a manner which evokes drip painting, so many ways of appropriating and reimagining classically masculine myths and symbols. An approach which ‘cools’ the high stakes of war, as Michel Aubry might put it. Pascal Bauer’s sculpture, half-missile and half-club, uses humour to defuse the violent spectre of war while also highlighting its essentially archaic nature. The 3D maps of the fortifications designed and constructed by Louvois and Vauban for Louis XIV are hybrid pieces, as much objects of entertainment as they are serious geographical, military and political tools. Whether purely fantastical or genuinely practical, miniaturisation is a practice capable of creating new narratives. The American army uses video 51
game simulations to both train and treat their soldiers, increasing their awareness and sharpening their reactions to the threats of war, while simultaneously numbing their sensitivity to its horrors. War thus becomes an abstraction, experienced as in a virtual reality. For others, war is a game of appearances: fans of military re-enactments, for example, stage battles which to all intents and purposes resemble genuine scenes of battle from Vietnam or Iraq. In the USA there are even training camps recreating the real thing in meticulous detail, with everything from the topography to the decoration, not to mention the clothes, haircuts and accessories, recreated from archive photographs and films.
monument devotes
considerable space to photography as well as sculpture.
Are contemporary images, still or moving, capable of taking on the mantle of the monumental without the outsized proportions? We might even suggest that photographers have reappraised and reinvented the idea of the monument more radically than sculptors. Confronted with the boundless visual possibilities offered by new technologies, photographers have seen their technical arsenal augmented and the scope of their medium expanded. It is also perhaps the case that sculpture has discovered different priorities, with a conscious will to break with the historical traditions of the form prompting sculptors to turn away from monuments. Whatever the case may be, photography has taken a turn towards the monumental. Patrick Tosani constructs his images on a scale which isolates and aggrandizes the subject, destabilising our perception of it. More than a simple representation, these images boldly project the subject matter into the spectator’s field of vision. Monumentality is not always a question of size, it can be expressed just as well by the power 52
of a photograph to create an imposing sense of presence, a EDIcapacity to direct and dominate the observer’s eye. Patrick TION N°1 Tosani’s photographs play on the same visual registers as the MAY 2014 booklet monuments they feature: figurative representation, impressive n°2 scale and a direct relationship between subject and depiction, the real and the represented. The photographs of Gilles Saussier also reveal a close relationship with the monumental, their primary subject matter. By crafting a historical, geographical, sociological and artistic visual narrative around Brancusi’s Endless Column, Saussier captures the monumental power of the Romanian sculptor’s masterpiece in full effect. Last but by no means least, Jocelyn Cottencin worked with a number of dancers, filming and photographing their ‘interpretations’ of monumental architecture. The dancers perform in neutral surroundings, focusing the attention on the positions and movements of their bodies as they establish a temporal and spatial relationship with the monuments in question. Like monumental sculpture, dance is all about projecting physical presence in a real, living space. Both are tightly connected with our conceptions of public spaces, sociability, intimacy and collective experience. Filming and photographing these performances takes the immediacy and spontaneity of dance and captures it for posterity: an excellent example of monument-making in action.
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54
monument
is an exhibi-
Sylvie Froux Director, Fonds régional d’art contemporain Basse-Normandie
tion
EDITION N°1
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booklet n°2
organised
by a number of organisations and
presented
in different locations
which aims
to provide visitors with the opportunity to discover a unique historical and commemorative perspective and a vision of things to come.
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EDITION N°1
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Left: Rémy Jacquier Pavillon Deligny, 2002. cardboard, wood, Plexiglass 150 x 175 x 130 cm. Middle: On the left: Soap Sculpture (Student Meeting Place Brétigny), 2013, soap, 95 x 30 x 30 cm, on the right: Soap Sculpture (Nearby george Washington), 2013, soap, 95 x 30 x 30 cm Courtesy of the artists. Right: Mick Peter Messiaen’s Ornithological Transcription, 2008, jesmonite, polyurethane foam and steel rods, 210 x 40 x 40 cm. Collection Frac Basse-Normandie.
Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage. 57
At Frac Basse Normandie, the exhibition opts for a slightly different tone and establishes a dialogue between our fragile and sometimes ambiguous memories, notably of the events of the 20th century, and a questioning about what events now and in the future might be commemorated by monuments. Artists and architects are in the front line when it comes to creating for posterity. More often than not we turn to them to imagine and construct our memorials, statues and other monuments. Matthieu Martin’s film Refresh the Revolution, part of the Frac Basse-Normandie collection, participates in this ongoing series of symbolic constructions. It shows how the artist renovated a tower by repainting it white from top to bottom. The structure, reminiscent of a water tower, is in fact an emblematic example of 1920s Russian modernist architecture, which embodied aspirations for a better life. Matthieu Martin’s impressive and single-handed actions in Ekaterinburg are a celebration of the heritage of the past. Part documentary, part fiction, Adela Babanova’s film Return to Adriaport investigates an extravagant project to build a tunnel linking Czechoslovakia to the Adriatic Sea. Behind the apparent political commitment and utopian vision (using the earth from digging the tunnel to build an island holiday resort for the common man) we are in the presence of a desire for conquest, an awareness of the geopolitical importance of access to the sea. Current events in Crimea are proving that this is a far from outdated notion. 1967: A People Kind of Place, a film by Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, uses audiovisual archive images to tell the story of a Canadian town which inaugurated the world’s first UFO landing pad to symbolically welcome aliens to Canada. Through this true story, the artist focuses, not without humour, on the situation of the typical immigrant, who is not always welcomed with open arms, in Canada or elsewhere. 58
In Soap Sculptures, Jeanne Gillard and Nicolas Rivet EDIreproduce, in miniature, sculptures from the public space. TION N°1 They have selected works that were either taken away or MAY 2014 booklet have simply disappeared, either because of censorship or n°2 decisions taken in connection with their location, as was the case for David Lamelas’ work in Brétigny, Barnett Newman’s monument in Washington or Laith al-Ameri’s sculpture in Iraq (which was destroyed soon after its installation). The depiction is doubly effective as the miniatures are made of soap, which of course dissolves when in contact with water. Pavillon Deligny by Rémy Jacquier is an imaginary architectural construction, a model for a building that pays tribute to Fernand Deligny, the pioneer of “new psychiatry” in the 60s and 70s (and an influence on the “anti-psychiatry” of Deleuze and Guattari). Deligny created a new form of residential centre for autistic children at a time when attempts were being made to offer an alternative to traditional medical institutions and treatments. In his sculpture Messiaen’s Ornithological Transcription, part of the Frac Basse-Normandie collection, Mick Peter portrays an eagle perching on a “statue”, in fact an approximate representation of a human figure. This totem-like creation, fouled by the bird’s excrement, is a reminder of the unfortunate lot of any monument placed in the street.
59
Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Robert Foster Spectre, 2014, performance, Friday 21st February 2014, Ozymandias of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817) print on A4 paper.
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EDITION N°1
MAY 2014
booklet n°2
Left: Mick Peter Messiaen’s Ornithological Transcription, 2008, jesmonite, polyurethane foam and steel rods, 210 x 40 x 40 cm. Collection Frac BasseNormandie.
Middle: on the left: Matthieu Martin Refresh the Revolution, colour video HD,10.51min, collection Frac BasseNormandie. on the right: Robert Foster Spectre, 2014, performance, Friday 21st February 2014, Ozymandias of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817) print on A4 paper.
Right: Jeanne Gillard & Nicolas Rivet Soap Sculpture (Nearby george Washington), 2013, soap, 95 x 30 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artists.
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Left: BenoĂŽt Billotte foreground: Apollo / Futuro, 2012 - 2013, screen-print, 57,5 x 41 cm. Background: Plaque Pioneer (version beta), September 2011, moulded lead plate, 23 x 17 cm.
62
Right: Boris Chouvellon Untitled, 2007-2011 A series of 8 colour photos, each 120 x 80 cm. Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
EDITION N°1
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booklet n°2
Left: Pascal Bauer background: Ready-made, 2009, printed on a sheet of PVC, 300 x 450 cm. middle, on the ground: Master_of_the_wolves, 2014, carrara marble, 9.5 x 85 x 30 cm. Artist’s own collection, School Gallery Olivier Castaing, Paris.
Right: Pascal Bauer background: Deep captive, 2012, stainless steel, aluminium, wood, flint, 85 x 22 x 22 cm. Simon Le Ruez A familiar place for the very first time, 2009 Wood, steel, concrete, household paint 116 x 36 x 105cm Artist’s personal collection Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Right: Léa Le Bricomte Guerres de Tribus, 2012, mortar round, braided leather, beads and feathers. Courtesy: Galerie Lara Vincy.
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monuments are
also symbols that participate
in constructing society’s unwritten laws, flags for example, which are an omnipresent feature of our daily lives. Sometimes their discrete presence changes into one of high visibility, such as in moments of intense nationalism or patriotism. In Sans titre, a series of images of torn and tattered flags by Boris Chouvellon, these suffering symbols, victims of both the weather and neglect, continue to dance in the wind and highlight the contradictions between words and actions. A crucial series of events in the history of mankind and one which was the result of competition between nations (a conflict perhaps only latent today), the conquest of space provides many glorious examples of man’s achievements. Benoît Billotte’s ironic take on the subject in Apollo/Futuro and Plaque Pioneer (version Beta) is similar to his ironic stigmatisation of the delusions of grandeur and thirst for power witnessed in the building of ever-higher skyscrapers, which he draws in sand as fragile silhouettes on the wall. Is the very order of society changing under the influence of mass production and the consumer society, globalisation, the internet, social networks and event tourism...? Are we witnessing the mutation of society as we know it and the foundations of a new order? Who better than the artist to try and give sense to these evolutions? That war tourism is an invention of the tourism industry, as the artists Diller & Scofidio pointed out in their work Visites aux armées: Tourisme de guerre published by the Frac in 1997, is underlined by Régis Fabre in Enterlude. The piece uses a photo originally published in Elle: a shocking and indecent sign seems to advertise the delights of a holiday in Auschwitz. It awaits the crowds of new visitors, who even if their motivation for visiting is one of remembrance, are still ‘tourists’. Another reminder of the horrors of war can be seen in Vakttorn, Régis Fabre’s new take on a flat-pack children’s bed (made by a famous brand whose name alone speaks volumes) redesigned as a most inhospitable looking watchtower.
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In Master_of_the_wolves, Pascal Bauer has engraved the EDIfragments of a discussion thread from an internet chat session TION N°1 onto a thick piece of marble. This absurd dialogue is inscribed MAY 2014 booklet in stone like a near indestructible epitaph. In contrast, n°2 Ready-made, an exhaustive inventory of inventions written on a canvas sheet, transforms the long alphabetical list into a tribute to man’s creativity reminiscent of a poem by Prévert. For A Familiar Place for the Very First Time, Simon Le Ruez combined an ironing board, a bunker and some artificial grass to make a most original sculpture. This incongruous, yet visually pleasing object, is a reference to confinement and its associations with alienation. Empty suits of armour pose for Carole Fékété’s life-size group photo Les Armures, which has been printed and glued to the wall. The photo confronts spectators with a fanciful mirror image that brings a smile to their faces. How not to hear the chinking of their armour as these cumbersome warriors, ghosts from our past, fidget in front of the camera. The defused bomb shells, kitted out in carefully entwined Native American feathers in Léa Le Bricomte’s Guerres de Tribus reach across temporal and cultural barriers, just like Deep Captive by Pascal Bauer, which combines a primitive club and a modern-day missile: both of these works are a reference to mankind’s insatiable propensity for violence. In Spectre, Robert Forster’s performance at the exhibition opening, the artist delivers a final warning as he stands completely still on a plinth, covered by a simple bedsheet like a ghost, immobile for more than three hours. The only trace which remains after the performance is the text of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817) pinned to a wall: a poem in which Shelley reflects that nothing lasts forever and that glory is vanity when put to the test of time.
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EDITION N°1
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booklet n°2
Left, background: Carole Fékété Les Armures, 2014 Photographic print on blueback paper, 275 x 542 cm. A co-production Musée des beaux-arts de Calais, Frac Basse-Normandie With our thanks to the Musée de l’Armée, Paris.
Jeanne Gillard & Nicolas Rivet Soap Sculpture (Shoeing protest Takrit), 2013, soap, 95 x 30 x 30 cm.
Left: Simon Le Ruez A familiar place for the very first time, 2009, wood, steel, concrete, household paint 116 x 36 x 105 cm. Artist’s personal collection.
Right: Régis Fabre left: Vakttorn, 2012, flat pack loft bed redesigned as a watchtower, wood, metal, cardboard and cloth, 208 x 80 x 90 cm. Collection Frac PoitouCharentes.
Right: Pascal Bauer Master_of_the_wolves, 2014, carrara marble, 9.5 x 85 x 30 cm. Artist’s own collection, School Gallery Olivier Castaing, Paris.
Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Right: Enterlude (part of the series, Les Choses vues), 2010, digital print, 63 cm x 48 cm Artist’s own collection Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage. 67
68
monument: Amanda Geitner Chief curator at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
aftermath
EDITION N°1
MAY 2014
booklet
of war and
n°2
conflict
monument
is the same
word in french
and english, pronounced
differently, but needing no translation. It carries with it similar associations of commemoration, grandeur, endurance and impact. This contemporary art exhibition is part of a cross-channel collaboration between galleries in England, Normandy and the Pas-de-Calais: regions which have in common 20th century war memorials that are a feature of nearly all towns and villages. The exhibition is one of three parts – in Norwich, Calais and Caen – that draws together works by artists who approach the idea of the monument in a great variety of ways. With the centenary of the First World War and the 70th anniversary of the Second World War Normandy landings as our starting point, some of the work on show addresses the conflict directly associated with these events and their legacy of memory.
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But not all artists in the exhibition, by any means, are focusing directly on these particular war events. Other works expand on the monument theme more generally, to look at architecture and the monumental in scale, the changing political and social significance of monuments and the nature of collective response. Some of these works of art are clearly intended as monuments, while others challenge both the concept, and our expectations. By bringing such diverse perspectives together, the curators of this exhibition aim to consider the relationships between private memories and their public expression, commemoration and physical embodiment, and how monumental qualities can be conveyed in the large-scale or reduced to the miniature.
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Paul Pouvreau’s monumental cardboard tower, rising over four metres from a trolley, introduces one of the themes of the exhibition upon entry to the vast space of Norman Foster’s main building. It is banal in its use of common materials, but impressive in scale. Nearby, a photograph shows a child taking aim from behind a cardboard box featuring a landscape. Together, the elements of the work make a play with both the child’s game of war and the adult’s perception of art.
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gallery 1
EDIThe first encounter in Gallery 1 is with a group of TION N°1 large-scale and spectacular works which tackle ideas of the MAY 2014 booklet construction and deconstruction of the monument, and which n°2 become, in their very different ways, tributes to the fragility of human life and experience. John McDonald’s grand steel cylinder is both a monument to the skills of the metalworker and also a tribute to those who died in the July 2005 bombings in London, by the artist who was a witness to that event. In contrast, Andrew Burton’s Things Fall Apart is a fragile architectural construction that seems to be at the point of collapse, made from thousands of tiny bricks recycled from other works and carrying with them the colours and marks that recall their past lives in other structures. Mark Edwards’ dramatic Shelter photographs re-imagine a context and purpose for a series of foresters’ giant log stacks. These structures are made monumental in large-scale illuminated black and white images and become a form of contemporary memorial to the place where they were found – a former airfield in Norfolk from which planes took off for support missions for the Normandy landings. Meanwhile, Boris Chouvellon’s poignant images capture destroyed flags against the sky in a state of desolation at some anonymous location. In the centre of the space, Marcus Vergette has placed his bell Silence, Beat, Silence, which may be rung by visitors – a simple act that is often associated with ceremony or privilege but here allows us to experience the finely-honed resonance of the bell for itself. The bell will move to the Undercroft in June where it will be placed beneath the war memorial.
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Monument exhibition views, cafeteria at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Paul Pouvreau Sans-titre, (Untitled) 2000, cardboard boxes on trolley, 450 x 250 x 125 cm. Photograph, 120 x 160 cm. Courtesy of the artist and SCRAWITCH, gallery, Paris.
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Photographs: Andy Crouch
Boris Chouvellon Sans-titre, (Untitled) 2007–2011, series of 15 photographs, 120 x 80 cm each. Courtesy of the artist.
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Monument exhibition views at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Galerie 1. Foreground: Andrew Burton Things Fall Apart 2008–2014, fired clay, adhesive. Indicative dimensions: 223 x 300 x 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © DACS.
Background on the left: Marcus Vergette Silent, Beat, Silent, 2013, bronze, stainless steel and lead, 115 x 145 x 85 cm. Courtesy de l’artiste.
Background on the middle: John McDonald Monument, 2011–2014, mild steel and stainless steel, 300 x 195 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Background on the right: Mark Edwards Shelter #2, 2014, photograph in light box, 120 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Shelter #3, 2014, photograph in light box, 122 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Shelter #4, 2014, photograph in light box, 122 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Shelter #5, 2014, photograph in light box, 122 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Photographs: Andy Crouch
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link bay 1
The call to artists from which the majority of works in this exhibition were selected, invited artists to submit either existing work, or proposals for works which might be commissioned and this resulted in a wide range of responses to the idea of monument. In this gallery the whole range of possibilities is represented, from the quiet memorial in war or peace, the monument as a bold statement of physicality, or almost as the opposite of that, as a philosophical reflection on fate and frailty. The long siege of Leningrad from 1941–1944 is the focus for Olga Boldyreff’s detailed and delicate graphite drawings, recalling the monuments built to commemorate it. She uses these images as a way to explore the memory and experience of her own Russian émigré family, making the transition from public to private memory. In a complete contrast of mood, material and means of expression, Benjamin Sabatier’s impossible concrete blocks, specially made for the exhibition, are the result of an impressive monumental artifice which by chance echoes the grand Brutalist ambitions of Denys Lasdun’s University of East Anglia campus. Very few war memorials in France are dedicated to the innocent victims, those who did not fight, yet who died, or who were pacifists and stood firm against the violence. Antoine Durand has documented these in a series of postcards that we invite visitors to take home with them. The black architectural model Alusage by Rémy Jacquier is part of a series based on the work of French Philosopher Denis Diderot (1731–1834). Its form is a monumental interpretation of a quotation in braille addressing the idea of ‘blindness for those that can see’. Four works from The Day Before – Star System series by Renaud AugusteDormeuil digitally capture the location of the stars in the night sky immediately before an event of notorious carnage and destruction. As strange and beautiful as the night sky, these images can be seen to represent a universe unconcerned with human tragedies, or the calm before the storm.
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EDIAt the heart of the Sainsbury Centre exhibition, opposite TION N°1 the Education Studio, is a film of twelve dancers by MAY 2014 booklet Jocelyn Cottencin, who also developed the graphic identity n°2 for the exhibition through a process of research, collaboration and performance. His typographic work and his video with the dancers were informed by documentation of the various public sculptures and monuments in each of the participating partners’ locations. Monuments from East Anglia are recognisable in the performance, such as Paul de Monchaux’s sculpture Breath in the Memorial Gardens, Norwich; the verticality of Norwich Cathedral or Richard Long’s Full Moon Circle located in Houghton Hall. The Memorial Monument of Princess Caroline Murat located in Ringsfield and the Elveden War Memorial by Clyde Young appear in the letters of the Monument font created by Cottencin. His work is emblematic of the way in which the artists in the exhibition have – with energy, curiosity and sometimes irony or humour – taken the idea of the monument as a way to launch broader examinations of a current desire to monumentalize.
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In the last gallery, is a series of monuments remade to scale, but for very different reasons. Miniature replicas by Jeanne Gillard and Nicolas Rivet of formerly censored official monuments, have been carved by them in soap, in the tradition of a practice initiated in the 1920s by American soap manufacturer, Proctor and Gamble. These are part of a larger research project into the changing fates of public sculptures.
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Olga Boldyreff Blokada Leningrada, (The siege of Leningrad) 2012–2013, charcoal, graphite and pastel on canvas, 54 x 73 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
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Jocelyn Cottencin Monumental 2014, HD video 47’, colour, sound Performed by Yaïr Barelli, Nuno Bizarro, Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Volmir Cordeiro, Madeleine Fournier, Matthieu Doze, Yves-Noël Genod, Elise Olhandeguy, Carole Perdereau, Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz, Loïc Touzé. Courtesy of the artist.
Monument exhibition views at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Link Bay 2. Photographs: Andy Crouch
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Monument exhibition views at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Link Bay 1. Left: Rémy Jacquier Alusage, 2006, cardboard and wood, 80 x 58 x 42 cm. Courtesy of Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris. Background: Benjamin Sabatier Crushed II, 2014, cement and wood, 220 x 100 x 100 cm. Courtesy of Galerie Bodson, Brussels.
Right: Renaud AugusteDormeuil The Day Before_Star System_ Dresden_February 12, 1945_23:59, 2004, inkject print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac Basse-Normandie, Caen, France. The Day Before_Star System_ Baghdad_January 15, 1991_23:59, 2004, inkjet print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac Basse-Normandie, Caen, France.
The Day Before_Star System_ New York_September 10, 2001_ 23:59, 2004, inkjet print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac Basse-Normandie, Caen, France. The Day Before_Star System_ Baghdad_March 18, 2003_23:59, 2004, inkject print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac Basse-Normandie, Caen, France.
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The work which marks the end of the exhibition is Maya Balcioglu and Stuart Brisley’s Cenotaph, made to represent Edwin Lutyens’ Whitehall Cenotaph to one-fifth scale. Built as a temporary structure as the focus for a peace rally at the end of the First World War, the original Cenotaph proved so popular that it was replaced by a permanent monument (now the official memorial for Britain) in 1920. This prototype model of the cenotaph comes from a series of sculptures and exhibitions Balciouglu and Brisley made in 1987, following Brisley’s residency at the Imperial War Museum, London. Its re-showing in Monument will be used by the artists to engage with audiences and continue their concern with the way in which works of art can facilitate our engagement with the social and political.
André Dunoyer de Segonzac Soldat, 1917, ink and wash on paper. Acquired 1939. Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, UEA 11.
Antoine Durand Maudite soit la guerre et ses auteurs, (Cursed be war and its perpetrators), 2013, postcards, 10.5 x 14.8 cm each. Courtesy of the artist.
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Monument exhibition views at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Link Bay 3. Foreground: Maya Balcioglu et Stuart Brisley The Cenotaph Project, 1987–91, MDF, 222.3 x 177.8 x 137.2 cm. Courtesy of the artists.
Background right to left: Jeanne Gillard et Nicolas Rivet Soap Sculpture (Emile or On Education) 2013, soap, 40 x 20 x 20 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Soap Sculpture (Young Obama Unwelcome Guest) 2013, soap, 55 x 30 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Soap Sculpture (Iron Curtain End) 2013, soap, 55 x 30 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artists.
Soap Sculpture (Hand Shows Armenian Purge) 2013, soap, 40 x 20 x 20 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Soap Sculpture (Fritz Fall Echoes Jura) 2013, soap, 40 x 20 x 20 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Photographs: Andy Crouch
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The project TAP has been selected within the frame of the INTERREG IV A France (Channel) – England cross-border European cooperation programme, part-financed by the ERDF.
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eandie
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jocelyn
cottencin
Born in 1967, Paris. Lives and works in Rennes. Jocelyn Cottencin begins from the standpoint that typography constitutes a graphical material, but one that also possesses a plastic quality: he explores this concept working in different genres with performances, installations in the public space, such as I Can’t Believe The News Today (2009) in Pau, and works on stage in collaboration with various choreographers, such as Vocabulario (2007) with Tiago Guedes. For the last ten or so years, he has been working with Loïc Touzé and has designed the stage sets for several pieces including LOVE (2003), 9 (2007), La Chance (2009), Gomme (2011) and Ô MONTAGNE (2012). He has also worked with Emmanuelle Huynh for Cribles (2009) and TOZAI (2014). He replied to the joint proposal from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Calais, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and Frac Basse-Normandie to devise the MONUMENT project’s graphic charter. As his starting point, he used photos of various monuments in Calais, Norwich and Caen to imagine a typeface used for the project name that appears on all communication materials. He also created a video entitled Monumental in which monuments, architectural constructions, statues and works of art are the basis for a visual score that is interpreted by a group of 12 performers and choreographers respecting pre-defined spatial and temporal limits. Monumental brings into play the question of how images are transmitted and received. Using statuary, elements of our architectural heritage and public art, the video with its group of performers displaces the notions of figure, narrative, and form. Each of the monuments selected is deconstructed, deciphered and reproduced through their actions and movements. > Jocelyn Cottencin at the Frac, March 25th at 7pm: projection of Monumental followed by a discussion with the artist.
boris chouvellon
Born in 1980, lives and works in Marseille and Paris. Boris Chouvellon’s work is deeply-rooted in the art of displacement, not just in physical displacement, but in the movement of the eye and shifts in perception. He hunts down the remaining vestiges of industrial production and the displacements it has engendered. His material comes from the outskirts of towns and cities, in zones where
the industrial landscape can still be found, between the flimsily-built warehouses which are a far cry from the old stone buildings of 19th and early 20th century docklands. Like portraits of scarred war veterans, his series of tattered flags is a reminder that behind vexillology, the study of flags, a veritable rogues’ gallery is to be found: tyrants and dictators whose magnificent projects raised to heroic glory, only to be deposed and thrown to the mercy of the crowd. In this series, the process of physical deterioration reveals the disorder of our world. Low-angle shots focus on the flags (or rather on what remains after the ravages of time) set against uniformly blue skies, transforming each flag into an icon. This viewpoint creates a hierarchical relationship between the observer and the object and, as such, is a metaphor for the relationship between individuals and the state. The flag is a dynamic emblem and yet here it represents ruin; it dances in the air but is strangely worrying, an image of once flamboyant nations whose authority seems so vulnerable today. Sources: Les petites illusions, exhibition press release, Buy-Sellf Art Club, Marseille, 2008 and Boris Chouvellon’s artist’s presentation.
benoît billotte
Born in 1983, lives and works in Metz and Geneva. Like a surveyor, Benoît Billotte observes the surrounding world to collect information and document resources. Equally at ease with numeric, scientific and technical data (maps, flow charts, statistics...), his innovative approach provides an original formal and conceptual take on his subject. Once removed from its initial context, this mass of objective data becomes purely abstract; a multitude of graphic and poetic symbols that the observer can interpret as he/she sees fit. Plaque Pioneer (version beta) revisits the commemorative object as a reminder of scientific achievement and in so doing preserves the memory of the first Pioneer plaque sent into space in 1972. The piece also refers to mankind’s desire to better understand the human condition. In the same vein, Apollo / Futuro is a photomontage reproducing a photo of the three Apollo 1 astronauts praying in front of their lunar module, replaced here by a model of the ‘Maison Futuro’, which was designed by Matti Suuronen and whose lines are reminiscent of a flying saucer. The work is a reminder of how man’s conquest of space drove economic growth and guided political strategy in the 20th century, as well as having a major
influence on mainstream culture, in particular with the development of science fiction and its influence on architecture. Finally, in his series Château de sable (Sandcastle) Benoît Billotte presents silhouettes of skyscrapers that, in every corner of the globe, vie to reach ever greater heights. This thirst for height is a very real expression of power and therefore, idols with feet of clay are springing up today in every major city. The grains of sand in the work represent all that will be left of these edifices: the ruins of a world that is no more. Sooner or later all these buildings will turn to dust and only images will remain. At the Frac, Benoît Billotte has reproduced one of Shanghai’s highest towers inaugurated in 2008. Source: Benoît Billotte’s artist’s statement.
jacqueline
hoang nguyen
Born in Montréal, lives and works in New York. In 1967, the Canadian Centennial Committee named St. Paul the “The Centennial Star” on account of the quantity, quality, and originality of the small town’s year-long celebratory activity; namely, the decision to build the world’s first “UFO Landing Pad”. This oval-shaped platform constructed in cement was an idea translated into architectural form, a metaphorical welcoming of all people – including “aliens” – to the nation. In this way, the UFO landing pad functions as a symbol for Canada’s increasing emphasis on hospitality, tolerance, diversity, and unity at that point in history. This shift in both discourse and policy is also evidenced by the concurrent implementation of a point-based immigration system focused on a set of objective criteria rather than the applicant’s country of origin. A complex and paradoxical structural representation of both nationalist and anti-nationalist discourse, St. Paul’s landing pad opens up a historical investigation of Canada as the “instigator” of multiculturalism. Source : Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen
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Jocelyn Cottencin, Graphic and visual design of the exhibition and digital magazine, creation of a specific typeface, 2014. Monumental, video, 2013 with Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz, Yair Barelli, Nuno Bizarro, Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Volmir Cordeiro, Madeleine Fournier, Mathieu Doze, Yves Noel Genod, Elise Olhandeguy, Carole Perdereau, Loïc Touzé.
Boris Chouvellon Untitled -2007-2011 A series of 8 colour photos, each 120 x 80 cm. Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Benoît Billotte left (photo): Apollo / Futuro, 2012 - 2013, screen-print, 57.5 x 41 cm. right (plaque): Plaque Pioneer (version beta), September 2011, moulded lead plate, 23 x 17 cm. Château de Sable, 2014, wall drawings in sand, 60 x 400 cm. Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen 1967 : A People Kind of Place, 2012, films Super 8, 16 mm and 35mm tranfered on DVD, 20 mn. Courtesy the artist. Exhibition’s view, photography Marc Domage.
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robert foster
Born in Wegberg,1989, Germany. Lives and works in Bristol. Covered with a sheet and set upon a plinth, a performer stands completely still during the entire exhibition opening: the only trace that remains after the performance is the text of Ozymandias, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that has been pinned to the wall. The very form of Robert Foster’s performance entitled Spectre, is a counterpoint to the monument concept: a performance is a transitory, ephemeral and fleeting art form, here reminiscent of a forgotten and abandoned sculpture of which only an infinitesimal part is visible. The poem at the origin of the piece is about the complexity of the creative act and the artist’s desire to leave works for posterity. As such the performance is an ironic illustration of the poem’s subject matter. By simply covering himself with a dust sheet, the artist takes to the limits of absurdity the idea of the body as the raw material of art and a means to emphasise the tension between reality and representation. This performance-sculpture is not only a reference to our collective history, but also to more intimate memories such as when children use sheets to dress up as ghosts.
matthieu martin
Born in 1986 – lives and works “in-cité”. Matthieu Martin uses the urban landscape as his inspiration and the raw material for the creation of his work. The artist describes himself as working “in-cité” (cité being French for the city-states of Antiquity or more prosaically a housing estate) and using the urban space as his studio. Amongst his works are a series of paintings, which at first appear to be monochrome, but on closer inspection reveal that they are painted on pages from graffiti magazines. The monochromatic planes concealing the page are reminiscent of the paint used around towns and cities to cover over graffiti. By covering the magazines with his own grey graffiti, Martin has recaptured the ephemeral nature of street art, which had been made permanent within the pages of the magazine. His series of massive stones equipped with castors (Povera Mobility) seems to be just as derisory as the paintings, though what is apparently no more than an absurd artistic gesture is in fact full of meaning. Such stones are used to block access to vacant lots and prevent their use by travellers, but here they are stripped of their initial function. These mobile stones modulate the empty urban spaces, and can be seen as facilitating a dialogue around possible utopias.
For Refresh the Revolution in Ekaterinburg, Matthieu Martin restored an abandoned tower by repainting it in its original white colour. This simple and unassuming gesture led to the tower receiving the protection it should have been afforded as a historical monument and removed it from the threat of ruin. The artist’s intervention saved the tower from oblivion by making it visible once more. Visibility is also the key to another project around a building in Saint Petersburg designed by the German architect Eric Mendelsohn, which had been abandoned and reclaimed by nature. Matthieu Martin brought the trees that had started to grow in the building into the gallery, as a representation of the abandoned building, thereby transforming them into a symbolic part of our architectural heritage and perpetuating the history of modernism. Chloé Hipeau, August 2013
mick peter
Born in Berlin in 1974, lives and works in Glasgow. “There are many undertakings for which a meticulous disorder is the best method.” This statement provides an insight into Mick Peter’s approach to sculpture through works that take as their starting point traditional sculptural techniques, such as carving. With their rough-and-ready aesthetic and handmade appearance, his ironic works perplex the viewer through their freedom of style, at odds with the dominant codes of contemporary sculpture. The materials used to cover the initial polystyrene form (resin, latex or other composite materials) give the work an unfinished and almost spongy aspect. Though Peter often keeps his sources of inspiration secret, his titles provide an indication of his influences, often revealing combined literary and musical references which are no mystery to the artist himself. Messiaen’s Ornithological Transcription is emblematic in the way it arranges these various elements. Mick Peter has combined the composer Messiaen’s interest for birdsong and Gustave Flaubert’s amused observation in his diaries on the condition of Egyptian statues that have to put up with the unpredictable “creations” of birds that visit them. The result is an absurd and ironic totem-like sculpture.
adela
babanova
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Born in Prague, 1980, lives and works in Prague. In her works Adela Babanova uses in her work literary forms and elements and formats from radio and television genres such as staged interviews or TV debates. From the outset of her career as an artist, she has frequently collaborated with the screenplay writing duo of screenplay writers Vojtech Masek and Dzian Baban. She also teams up with professional film crews and actors, and uses manipulated vintage photography as well as 3D animation for her stories. Her latest video project Return to Adriaport speaks of the enduring desire of inlanders for the sea. It depicts the meeting of Czechoslovakian communist president Gustáv Husák with professor Žlábek, who is trying to persuade the president to believe in his vision. The two men share a dream of travelling to the sea, of freedom and of happiness in the gloomy reality of socialism. The film, a blend of fiction and historical facts, represents another collaboration between Adela Babanova and writers Džian Baban and Vojtech Mašek. The video was premiered at the Loop Art Fair Barcelona 2013.
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Source : Jiri Svestka Gallery, Prague Rémy Jacquier Pavillon Deligny. 2002. carton, bois, plexiglass., 150 x 175 x 130 cm.
Robert Foster Spectre, 2014, performance, February 21st, 2014, Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817, print on A4 paper
Matthieu Martin Refresh the Revolution, video couleur HD, 10.51 min. Collection Frac Basse-Normandie
Mick Peter Messiaen’s Ornithological Transcription, 2008 Jesmonite, polyurethane foam and steel rods, 210 x 40 x 40 cm. Collection Frac BasseNormandie
Adela Babanova Return to Adriaport, 2013 video, 12 min. Courtesy Jiri Svestka Gallery
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jeanne gillard
& nicolas rivet
Born in 1983, they live and work in Geneva. Soap Sculpture, a collection representing censored public sculptures made out of soap, can be considered as heir to Edward Bernays’ soap sculpture competitions that he organised in America in the 1930s. It features sculptures that were removed from their initial location as they were the focus of unrest and threats, and were subsequently censored as a result. After researching the history of banned monuments, Jeanne Gillard & Nicolas Rivet realised that this censorship was not solely related to the appearance of the sculpture itself, but also the relationship between the sculpture and its immediate surroundings, which indicates that the understanding of the public sculpture is dependent on its context. Take Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, which was initially located in Washington not far from the obelisk commemorating the first president of America: the sculpture was removed because it infringed on American civil values. Or Symbol of Courage by Laith Al-Amiri, produced in January 2009 with the participation of children from an orphanage, a monument to Muntazer Al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush. The original sculpture was destroyed soon after its installation, but reappeared at the Palais de Tokyo in 2010, an illustration of the artists’ thoughts on how such a commonplace object like the shoe, could become a contested object. These sculptures comprise a critical archive of censored public sculptures removed from their original locations. Source: artists’ presentation and www.palaisdetokyo.com
régis fabre
Born in1969, lives and works in Angoulême. Régis Fabre’s work is littered with images from our modern-day consumer society. He finds inspiration in those omnipresent media themes, which though they may be violent or unpleasant, acclimatise us to their content through their constant presence. In spite of the variety of his work, all his subjects are imbued with the same disturbing atmosphere. Régis Fabre takes the universal codes of society to the extreme in a diatribe aimed at the dark and sleazy side of life that seems to be accepted as an unavoidable part of our everyday lives. Enterlude is taken from his series, Les choses vues. The work features a small photo, originally published in “Elle”, which would probably have
gone unseen had you leafed distractedly through the magazine, lost as it was in the mass of articles and heterogeneous images, placed rather incongruously between a recipe and some shopping advice. But it was precisely this image that caught Régis Fabre’s eye and, taken out of its original context, reframed and enlarged, it creates an insidious feeling of unease. In Vakttorn, Régis Fabre transformed a household name’s flat-pack child’s bed into a wood and cardboard watchtower, part scale model, part children’s building block construction... and a symbolic portrayal of authoritarian power. The approach is similar to the process used in Enterlude: the object is removed from its context and presented from a totally new viewpoint, thereby highlighting some very concrete issues. Source: Frac Poitou-Charentes
carole fékété
Born in 1970, lives and works in Paris. Carole Fékété’s photos often represent objects that have been stripped of their context and presented in isolation, against a neutral and indistinct background. With the exception of a self-portrait as the French pantomime character Pierrot, the human form is absent from her work, and yet whether through traces or remains, almost everything alludes to its presence. Her series usually adopt a unique, frontal viewpoint: the camera capturing precise details in total acceptance of its documentary function, and even if the analogical and digital images are created in reaction to intangible light, what is at stake here is the struggle to keep a grip on reality, situating these images somewhere between reality and fiction. Starting out as a traditional group photo, Carole Fékété’s armour project comprises a full-scale monumental image. Armour’s primary function is to protect its wearer’s body, but here the empty suits of armour stand in for the body. The image establishes an ambiguous relationship between the ghostly appearance of these obsolete objects and their very tangible presence highlighted by a lifelike mise en scene. With this project, the serial aspect that is characteristic of the artist’s approach is adapted to the single image. Science fiction confronts the historical weight of the museum collection and future and past merge.
The almost farcical nature of these moustachioed metal bodies, like 16th or 17th century versions of C-3PO off to a masked ball, alludes both to the playful side of war games and the absurd aspect of these implausible accoutrements.
Sources: http://www.collectionsocietegenerale.com and the artist’s presentation.
simon le ruez
Born in 1970, lives and works in Sheffield and Berlin. Simon Le Ruez takes an interest in the way in which the trivia of our daily life can be turned into a monument, through work that juxtaposes the separate territories of ‘indoors’ and ‘outdoors’. In A Familiar Place for the Very First Time, a facsimile of a lawn becomes part of a bizarre scene, a bunker-cum-ironing board which combines domesticity and the unvarying task of ironing with the violence of the bunker. And yet the bunker does not solely convey ideas of war: it is also a shelter, a place where one can be alone, where the spirit can roam free and a place of imprisonment. The bunker only becomes a monument because it has been abandoned, when inactivity, idleness and decay elevate the structure to the status of a witness to past events.
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Jeanne Gillard & Nicolas Rivet left : Nearby george Washington Monument, 1969 from the serie Soap, 2013, sculpture on soap, graphite on wood, 95 x 30x 30 cm each. right : Student Meeting Place Brétigny, 2004, from the serie Soap, 2013, sculpture on soap, graphite on wood, 95 x 30x 30 cm each. Shoeing protest Takrit, 2009, from the serie Soap, 2013, sculpture on soap, graphite on wood, 95 x 30x 30 cm each. Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Régis Fabre left: Vakttorn, 2012 Flat pack loft bed redesigned as a watchtower Wood, metal, cardboard and cloth 208 x 80 x 90 cm Collection Frac PoitouCharentes right: Enterlude (part of the series, Les Choses vues), 2010 Digital print 63 cm x 48 cm Artist’s own collection Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage.
Simon Le Ruez A familiar place for the very first time, 2009 Wood, steel, concrete, household paint 116 x 36 x 105 cm Artist’s personal collection Exhibition views: photos by Marc Domage. Carole Fékété Les armures, 2014 Photographic print on blueback paper, 275 x 542 cm A co-production Musée des beaux-arts de Calais, Frac Basse-Normandie With our thanks to the Musée de l’Armée, Paris
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Pascal Bauer left: Ready-made, 2009, printed on a sheet of PVC, 300 x 450 cm. middle: (marbre au sol) : Master_of_the_wolves, 2014, carrara marble, 9.5 x 85 x 30 cm. Artist’s own collection, School Gallery Olivier Castaing, Paris.
right : Deep captive, 2012, stainless steel, aluminium, wood, flint, 85 x 22 x 22 cm.
LĂŠa Le Bricompte Guerres de Tribus, 2012, mortar round, braided leather, beads and feathers. Courtesy: Galerie Lara Vincy.
léa le bricomte
Born in 1987, lives and works in Paris. Léa Le Bricomte’s artistic practice is structured around her body: she calls into question welldefined concepts, the body, the object and the image, through multi-disciplinary reflection. She references what was a highly-productive period in the history of art: the 1960s and 1970s, and the questions posed by artists from the fields of Body Art and Nouveau Réalisme. In a fitting approach that combines readymades (manufactured / serial objects), examples of craftsmanship (handcrafted / unique objects) and physical actions (the living organism – body – movement) she elaborates what she calls an aesthetic of secretions. She explores the world of war via military iconography and paraphernalia (shells, bullets, targets, medals, handcuffs and weapons), gathering these objects into a new collection, the remains of past and recent conflicts, where they can be assigned new roles. The objects are grouped together, moulded (vaseline, latex) and decked out with casters or feathers... Léa Le Bricomte works with creolization, not just of the objects themselves, but also of their symbolic value, their history and their significance in a decompartmentalized collective imagination. The series of shells mounted on skateboard wheels (Free Rider 2011-2012) could almost be perceived as playful, as the ammunition is now devoid of its offensive and dangerous function. In her series, Guerre de Tribus, mortar rounds, APAV 40 rifle grenades and hand grenades are combined with feathers from an Indian reservation in Canada.The weapons themselves allude to the industrialised western world, whereas the braided leather and feathers that adorn them are part of traditional Native American war dress. Two cultures combine; two different worlds meet as the artist creates talismans that convey both of the proliferation of war and mankind’s more primitive relationship to warfare. Julie Crenn
pascal bauer
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TION Lives and works in Paris. N°1 MAY 2014 “Pascal Bauer’s oeuvre provides a booklet lucid insight into a world whose models, n°3 notably the male ones, are faltering to say the least. He tackles stereotypes and our social conditioning head on in works whose message is generally nuanced by ironic humour. His body of work always remains humble to some degree; it is not bitter and, through its conciliatory mediation, pacifies sarcasm’s cruel antitheses.”
Raphaël Cuir.
Ready-made is a list of 11,000 terms that have been compiled from the files of the different European organisations in charge of protecting industrial property rights. This list represents the totality of those more or less everyday objects, whose development thereby declared and registered, represents the entirety of the human intellect. The very idea that the sum of mankind’s brainpower can thus be reduced to a simple list on a piece of paper is quite simply stupefying, and yet we are confronted with a feeling of fascination at the sheer volume of goods produced. Deep Captive combines two weapons: a missile and a club. The use of such hybrid materials (stainless steel, aluminium, wood, flint) represents a technical achievement in its own right, but is also an expression of the hybridisation of different time periods: the temporal ellipsis of this artwork brings together prehistory and the modern day. It is as if cavemen and the heat-seeking missile were contemporaries. Deep Captive condenses the age-long history of man’s warlike tendencies into a single object: the piece’s slogan-like visual impact is the result of the very characteristics and density proper to a rhetorical ellipsis.” Raphael Cuir. Master_of_the_wolves is an Internet chat session that has been carved in marble. In the same play of instantaneity and the eternal, the role of this transcription is not mockery, but an observation of complete strangers, who can be considered as archetypal of their times, and an appraisal of their capacity for resignation and self-alienation. The obvious analogy with a public monument is an ironic posture: instead of the monument’s usual function of evoking and commemorating positive values, this ‘monument’ addresses a contemporary social problem. Source: Pascal Bauer, artist’s presentation
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pascal bauer
Born in 1959, Tuléar, Madagascar. Lives and works in Paris. A previous career as a designer has instilled Pascal Bauer with a profoundly functional aesthetic. He likens the rhetorical nature of monuments to the message-laden iconography of advertising. As he puts it, behind every monument there is: “a desire for direct communication with the public, reaching as many people as possible, with an eloquence which is simple and accessible to all. There are four key characteristics which define a monument, and which monuments share with other works of art: meaning, synthesis, accessibility and emphasis.” While Bauer takes no issue with the first three of these properties, he finds the fourth harder to handle. “Emphasis is often the most vulgar element of expression, hence the unappealing nature of most monuments. And yet the works which most appeal to me often pull off this incredible balancing act, walking the fine line between meaningless and vulgarity. That’s the line I want to follow.” We must be the most intelligent, because we’re here – a phrase uttered by a Greek politician at the onset of the crisis and transformed by the artist into a curious sort of speech bubble, a literal and ironic interpretation of the old cliché ‘set in stone’, here in the form of a headstone. These words are thus consecrated, preserved: the monument becomes an irrefutable, enduring testament to arrogance, superiority or even idiocy. The rich, luxurious marble used echoes the tradition of classical sculpture, jarring with the comic strip-inspired form of the speech bubble.
carole fékété
Born in 1970, Alger. Lives and works in Paris. The Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Basse Normandie and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Calais have joined forces to support Carole Fékété’s project Les Armures [Armour]. For the past two years, Carole Fékété has been planning this work involving a collection of suits of armour held by the Musée de l’Armée in Paris. Taken in a photography studio, this otherworldly family portrait will be printed and hung on the walls of the two exhibition spaces in 3 m x 6 m format. This ambitious project required the transportation of the suits of armour to a suitable space, with a special platform constructed in order to hold them in place, then covered with a fabric drape. A photographer and filmmaker followed the evolution of the project in order to create a ‘making of ’ documentary. With this project Carole Fékété turns her lens onto a group of objects imbued with serious historical and emotional resonance, but precious
little pathos. The clinical, frontal and ultimately anachronistic positioning of the suits of armour shows these traditional images of strength emptied of the object they are designed to protect and show off: the body of the warrior. What seems to most appeal to the artist in this collection is the way in which it allows for reflection on photography as a medium. These metallic surfaces recall the emulsion of silver used on the negative plates for monochrome analogue photography, while also carrying echoes of embalmment, the symbolic purpose of photography. “Faced with the historicity of a genuine museum collection, a hint of science fiction rears its head. A breach is made, opening the way for fantasy and fable, and even a hint of the burlesque, without ever fully overcoming the innate sense of violence which inhabits these cold, military effigies.” Carole Fékété.
sylvie ungauer
Born in 1963, Voiron, Suisse. Lives and works in Brest. Sylvie Ungauer’s approach to art is expansive, collaborative and interactive, informed by the networks of interconnected spaces and information which structure our daily lives. She expresses the results of her research using a variety of materials and techniques, from fabrics to internet systems. In Prêt à porter she fuses two discrete influences: the WWII bunkers of the Atlantic coast, which she discovered by spending time in Brest, and the story of a female Sudanese journalist arrested for wearing trousers, a sartorial choice deemed indecent for women. Designed and built by Organisation Todt, one of the Third Reich’s civil and military engineering groups active during WWII, the bunkers have since been transformed by the actions of nature and of man, gradually becoming integral components of the coastal landscape. Based on scale models of ten of these blockhaus bunkers, these ‘bunker-burqas’ are examples of wearable architecture. They were created in Saint Hilaire Peyroux in the Corrèze region, in collaboration with Brigitte Paillet (‘Mes chapeaux et moi’), a fashion designer and recipient of the ‘France’s best craftsperson’ award and JeanMarc Dufour, a sculptor. Ungauer is particularly fond of the following quotation from Paul Virilio: “For me the air-raid shelters were symbols of man’s anguish, and the normative systems which are constantly reproduced by the city, our cities, urban life. These bunkers were anthropomorphic, their shapes based on that of the human body: the result was the blockhaus.” (taken from Bunker Archéologie).
paul pouvreau
Born in 1956, Aulnay sous Bois. Lives and works in Paris, Arles and Argenton-sur-Creuse. For years now Paul Pouvreau has been using cardboard and plastic bags as tools, subjects and symbols of our consumerist society. The photographer approaches such packaging items with a certain warmth, regarding them as forms whose potential has yet to be revealed. Manufactured, distributed, used, thrown away and recycled: these banal materials are symbols of the constant flux of modern life, seen as valued protectors one minute and junk the next. ARCHI 2012 is one of a series of 6 black-andwhite screen prints designed with urban spaces in mind. Intended to be shown in peripheral urban zones dominated by the colourful, forceful arrogance of advertising hoardings, Pouvreau made a conscious decision to limit himself to monochrome. The packages used were bought off the shelf by the artist, and stored for several months before being selected on the basis of their shape. Pouvreau assembled these building blocks with meticulous precision, creating a structure whose profile and monumentality recall the factories used in the food production industry. The large dimensions, tightly-cropped framing and interplay of shadow and light elevate these materials above their banal origins, creating an image which is both timeless and solemn. These flimsy creations, at once poor and yet sophisticated, thus shed their playful, patchwork air to become real, solid buildings. The images thus conflate the products and the buildings from which they came, in a neat visual combination. In Calais, set on the beautiful Opal Coast, this work assumes special significance, recalling the city’s economic and social history and a time when the building which now houses the municipal authorities was still used as a Lu biscuit factory.
benoît billotte
Born in 1983, Metz. Lives and works in Metz and Genève. Benoit Billotte’s work takes the form of an explicit, encyclopaedic study of contemporary iconography. In establishing the ‘International Organisation for Contemporary Art’ Billotte has placed his own work firmly within the context of our artistically, politically, historically, geographically and socially globalised world. Starting from the observation that our whole environment can be expressed in images, even
architecture and the urban landscape, EDITION he subverts these images in order to N°1 MAY 2014 better highlight their fundamental booklet falseness and superficiality. Sandcastle n°3 presents silhouettes of tall, streamlined buildings which reflect our desire to build ever higher and bigger, creating images and declarations of power and immortality. And yet the sand used reminds us of the ultimately temporary nature of these edifices, their eventual erosion a part of the endless cycle of matter, just like their construction. Sandcastle pays tribute to contemporary monuments which do not commemorate death or tragedy, but serve a public or even tourism-based function.
Pascal Bauer Nous sommes là [We are Here] 2012, Carrare marble, 155 x 50 x 9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and the School Gallery / Olivier Castaing.
Carole Fékété Les Armures [Armour], 2014, inkjet print, 280 x 550 cm. A coproduction of FRAC Basse- Normandie, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, Musée de l’Armée, Paris and the artist. ©Carole Fékété.
Sylvie Ungauer Bunker-burqa : 10 structures in felt and metal with various display supports: from 1.6 m high and 1.1 m wide. 10 metal frames, 1.6 m high with 30 cm base, 2012.
Paul Pouvreau ARCHI 2012, Black and white screen print, 400 x 300 cm. Galerie Scrawitch. ©Paul Pouvreau.
Benoît Billotte Château de sable [Sandcastle] drawings in sand, 60 x 350 cm, 2014. ©Sonia Chanel.
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micha laury
Born in 1946, Negba, Israël. Lives and works in Paris. The starting point for Micha Laury’s work is the observation that, in spite of the scientific and technological progress which has freed mankind from various laborious and dangerous tasks, the familiar forms of alienation of the human body have never gone away. The human body has become an object at the mercy of competing ideologies. Laury presents material manifestations of various insults used in the army, denouncing the humiliation and programming which soldiers undergo: “Eating Straw, Shitting Cubes, Hard Life” and “Don’t be a chocolate Soldier” evoke calls to combat, with the implication being that real warriors have balls of steel, not chocolate. Laury even looked into the possibility of selling his chocolate soldiers in bakeries… Micha Laury’s work is haunted by memories of the bunker. As a soldier in the Israeli army he spent untold hours within these structures, so numerous throughout the country. The bunker has thus become a symbol of shelter and survival. The ingenuities of design required by these tight spaces find echoes in the abstract drawings in which the artist sketches geometrically simplified impressions of the benches, chairs and walls which make up his living space, be it a bunker or a studio. “With these bunkers, which seem to close in on themselves, Micha Laury openly denounces the fundamental incommunicability of our world… New technologies have further exacerbated the isolation of contemporary man. You can now be connected to the whole world without ever leaving the house. The artist casts a sceptical eye over this individualistic society which soon takes the form of a bubble. Or a bunker. Homes, cars, televisions, computers: bubbles which allow us to move in this virtual world, communicating without touching, without seeing and without moving.” Jérôme Sans, p. 20 Micha Laury, Sculptures, installations and works on paper, 1967-1994, Catalogue 1994.
wolf vostell
Born in 1932, Leverkusen. Died 1998, Berlin. Emerging as part of the Fluxus movement, Vostell was a tireless critic of consumerist society through his dramatic creations. While one of these installations - Heuschrecken (Grasshoppers) - directly evokes the bombing of Hamburg, Vostell was above all committed to criticising the present, represented by the twin totems of the car and the television. He presents an accelerated critique of the ageing syndrome which besets our technological society. The concept of ‘dismantling’, which
Vostell first introduced in 1954, informed his use of real materials. Concrete was one of his favourite materials, and its physical heft inevitably recalls wartime bunkers. Here the concrete stands as an emblem of eternal ruin: no decay, and indeed no poetry, can be expected of a society where only concrete is immune to the creeping obsolescence of all things.
john cornu
Born in 1976, Seclin. Lives and works in Paris and Rennes. John Cornu likes to experiment with new materials and techniques (wood sculpture, marble, concrete, photography, architectural manipulation, tattoos, neon, watercolours). Many of his works seek to reconcile a modernist approach (monochrome, reproducibility, distance and modularity) with a more romantic streak which tends towards images of ruin, blindness and disappearance. Cornu takes aim at the archetypes of a modernism as fascinating as it is idealistic, and the paranoia-inducing power of certain materials and structures (arrow slits, caltrops, anti-tank barriers, panoptica). Death in the Heart is a series of romantic ‘ready-mades’. Chopping blocks, blackened by use and purchased from butchers now dead or retired. The power of these items is at once physical and intangible: the time-weathered surfaces reveal, simply and directly, the scratches and stigmata inflicted by the impact of the knives. This violence carries obvious echoes of war and the carnage of conflict. The Great War is often described as a ‘slaughter’, with terrible human losses. These black surfaces, scarred indiscriminately by countless knife blows, are like so many desolate landscapes: battered, bruised and eroded. The chopping blocks become images of the devastated landscape, disfigured by battlefields and trenches.
laurent sfar
Born in 1969, Paris. Lives and works in Grenoble and Paris. Laurent Sfar is fascinated by architecture and public spaces. His works and projects are often context-specific, capturing a visceral, personal reaction to a given space. In Excavation, he used successive layers of sediment to bury the house designed by Le Corbusier on the Frugès estate in Pessac, near Bordeaux. Among the 50 or so houses which make up this garden city, created in 1925, only one was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. No photographic record of
this lost house is known to have survived. With this artificial fossilisation, Laurent Sfar throws the distance between the original project and the inhabitants’ appropriation of their home environment into stark relief. He based his work on painstaking documentary research, going as far as to blow up an old photograph taken during the construction of one of the nearby houses, overlaying his sketches with architectural plans of the house and decorating the space’s exhibition with the colours proposed by the architect to a swiss company the year the house has been destroyed. Models of the Ile de France is a series of closed, hermetic models surrounded by a vegetation which is more artificial than natural. There is no place here for humans. In the rich tradition of Piranesi’s imaginary spaces, these models can be read as three-dimensional insights into the mind of their creator, fantasies of form and line where reason is pitched against pure imagination. Laurent Sfar imagines suburban houses subjected to the structures of military fortification, with defence and surveillance systems taking priority over lesser considerations such as actual living space. These imaginary suburbs are thus transformed into militarised zones, with the risk that human occupation will gradually become impossible if the imperatives of security and control are allowed to become the sole objectives of architecture and urban planning. Micha Laury Bunker, watercolour on card, 1969, inv. no. 995.23.1. Collection du Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, acquired with support from the Regional Museums’ Acquisition Fund (national government/Conseil Régional du Nord-Pas de Calais) © F. Kleinefenn. © Adagp, Paris, 2014. Figure melting into a tomb, ink on paper, 1968, inv. no. 995.23.5. Collection du Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, acquired with support from the Regional Museums’ Acquisition Fund (national government/Conseil Régional du Nord-Pas de Calais) © F. Kleinefenn. © Adagp, Paris, 2014. Don’t be a Chocolate Soldier, 1969 – 1994, 3D chocolate soldier figurines, presented beneath a plexiglass screen. Chocolate, wood, plexiglass, 155 x 170 x 40 cm. Collection FRAC Basse-Normandie. © Adagp, Paris, 2014.
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Wolf Vostell Circulation bloquée [Blocked traffic], print, 1974, Musée des Beaux-Arts, gift from the artist, 1983, inv. no. 983.13.1. © F. Kleinefenn. © Adagp, Paris, 2014.
John Cornu La mort dans l’âme [Sick at Heart] 2012, butcher’s blocks, black paint and wax, various sizes. Courtesy of the artist, Ricou Gallery, Brussels and Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris.
Laurent Sfar Excavation, 2007 / 2010, acrylic resin, paper, wood, flocking, 142 x 55 x 68 cm. La forme du doute [The shape of Doubt], 2010, inkjet print on 120 g paper displayed in a case of 94.5 x 120 x 4 cm. Archival Blotter, 2010, embossing on Archival Blotter 315 gr paper, displayed in a case of 91 x 85.5 x 4 cm. Modèle Ile de France, 2000 – 2008, Model using various materials, 13 x 169.5 x 169.5 cm. Modèle Ile de France (#2), 2001, model using various materials, 13 x 27 x 27 cm. Modèle Ile de France (#8), 2003, model using various materials, 13 x 45 x 45 cm.
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leo fabrizio
Born in 1976, Moudon, Switzerland. Lives and works in Lausanne. Leo Fabrizio spent three years working on this photo-documentary project exploring fortified bunkers in Switzerland, taking over 400 photographs of these military structures built in the mid-20th century in Europe’s most peaceful nation, and theoretically capable of sheltering the entire Swiss population. Fabrizio started with bunkers located close to major communication routes, still easily visible, before expanding his investigations to cover the whole country. The architectural interest of the structures was soon matched by the fascinating question of camouflage and the ways in which these bunkers have gradually integrated themselves into the landscape, gradually coming to resemble natural extensions of the surrounding countryside. Camouflage techniques used by animals and humans are supplemented here by the creation of a new and singular visual vocabulary born of the need for architectural camouflage. To better blend in with the landscape these structures borrow freely from the variety of forms found in the vernacular architecture, while also seeking to mimic the contours of the natural surroundings. The photographer presents his images in landscape format, focusing all attention on his idiosyncratic reading of a nature which has been tamed, but above all militarised. This monumental project breathes new life into a heritage which had gradually become invisible, creating in the process a sort of ‘visual history’ of Switzerland. The artist does not seek to impose his interpretation, he draws the attention of the spectator, the onlooker and the solitary wanderer to the shortcomings of our overly romantic, naïve preconceptions about landscape and architecture.
virginie maillard
Born in 1970, Landerneau. Lives and works in Boulogne-sur-Mer. ‘Anamnesis Land’ doesn’t exist, but its roots lie in a number of very real places and their history. Artificially placed in this manner, in each image the illuminated signs serve to reawaken the past, in these sites which have now been converted to new uses or simply left stranded in the landscape. What emerges is a form of dialogue between the word and the building. These signs are symbolic of the society of the spectacle and of consumption, serving to highlight that contrast between the original function of the buildings and their new lives, what you might call their second chance to enter our collective memory. Each space has its own complex web of overlapping associations and meanings, from the form of the structure and its role in history to more recent uses and events. This ‘compilation’ of emotional associations and more concrete characteristics determines the form of the neon sign used. Anamnesis is a medical term equivalent to ‘case history’. Here it serves as a metaphor, uniting spaces marked by a history which continues to evolve in an era plagued with crisis and wars.” Virginie Maillard For this project Virginie Maillard photographed 5 WWII bunkers dotted along the coast at Boulogne sur Mer, Wissant (since destroyed), Equihen, Helfaut (Musée la Coupole) and Longues Sur Mer in Normandy.
boris chouvellon
Born in 1980, Saint-Etienne. Lives and works in Paris and Marseille. Boris Chouvellon is a keen observer of urban spaces and their peripheries, those vague, chaotic zones which always seem to be either in construction or in the process of falling into ruin. Drawing inspiration from the Arte Povera movement, the materials he uses are humble and his techniques basic, relying on simple forms and maintaining a straightforward relationship with the raw materials. He takes samples and fragments of this decaying world, picked up in the course of his travels, and breaks them down further still to achieve stark results. In this case, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing ‘badly’. Style reconstruction, the tower is a piece of architectural nonsense, a sort of formal hybrid. The tower is made of prefabricated panels of openwork concrete, a common building material, and features a mixture of decorative styles. An anti-monument par excellence, it more closely resembles a garden folly of the 18th century than anything we might consider formal architecture. The mere presence of this watch-tower, however anachronistic it may be in this age of special forces and invisible wars, immediately transforms any landscape into a theatre of war. Inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s reflections on prison architecture, and his famous Panopticon, this mirador is a totem designed as much to impress the populace as to instil fear in the enemy.
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Boris Chouvellon Style Reconstruction La Tour, 2012, sections of concrete fencing. Production 2Angles Flers. Courtesy Boris Chouvellon.
Leo Fabrizio Furkapass, 2002, colour photograph on aluminium backing, 80 x 100 cm. Fort Pré-Giroud, 2000, colour photograph on aluminium backing, 80 x 100 cm. Aiguilles de Baulmes, 2001, colour photograph on aluminium backing, 80 x 100 cm. Gütsch, 2002, colour photograph on aluminium backing, 80 x 100 cm. Collection FRAC Basse-Normandie.
Virginie Maillard Department of Justice, C-print photographic print on composite panel 54 x 80 cm. Marriage Center, C-print photographic print on composite panel 54 x 80 cm. Girls, C-print photographic print on composite panel 54 x 80 cm. Coffee Shop, C-print photographic print on composite panel 54 x 80 cm. Stock Market, C-print photographic print on composite panel, 54 x 80 cm. Series: Anamnesis Land. © Virginie Maillard.
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léa le bricomte
Born in 1987, Montbard. Lives and works in Paris. Léa Le Bricomte is a firm believer in Robert Filliou’s famous dictum: art is what makes life more interesting than art. You might even say that she has made this gnomic proclamation her rallying cry. The vital, pulsing energy of life is at the heart of all of her work, and it is no coincidence that her body regularly serves as the canvas and subject matter for her performances, which regularly feature references to animals and weapons in various guises. A worthy heir to the iconoclastic, cosmopolitan Filliou, Le Bricomte considers playfulness a vital artistic tool, and peace the ultimate artistic goal. Her work explores notions of conflict and combat through the use of military materials and imagery: shells, bullets, targets, medals, handcuffs, all diverted from their intended purpose. Dripping Medals (2012) is an installation featuring military medals hanging from ribbons and attached to the wall in neat rows. The title hints at the influence of American painters of the 1950s, particularly the techniques employed by Jackson Pollock where the physical texture of the material itself becomes the subject of the painting. This revolutionary approach signalled the end of the prevailing obsession with the artist’s touch, the brush-stroke as window into the creator’s soul. A new approach to painting was born, mechanical and industrial, evoking bodies in motion. Léa Le Bricomte does not attempt to subvert the meaning of these medals, preferring instead to see them for what they are: symbols of grateful recognition for the actions, commitments and values of their recipients. However, by presenting the coloured ribbons of various nationalities side by side she aims to strip away their specificity, their symbolic consecration of difference.
michel aubry
Born in 1959, Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët Lives and works in Paris and Nantes. In 2001, Michel Aubry had the idea of producing an updated version of the 1920 Michelin Guide to the battlefields of the Vosges. Born and raised in Alsace, the scars left by war have always been an influence on his art. As a child he would explore the traces of the Great War still visible near the family farm, and he has vivid memories of taking apart shells to extract the gunpowder or fuse. In Tables and Chandelier he combines these ‘cooled’ objects with the boring tools used to dig trenches and orchestrated masses of reeds. This composition takes on the air of a particularly eccentric jumble sale, arranged into
Aubry’s favoured pentagon formation. A musical accompaniment gives the ensemble the air of a curious ceremonial meal. In Musical accompaniment to Beuys’ flight suit before the crash and Musical accompaniment to Beuys’ trousers after the crash Aubry sets out to demystify the legend surrounding the German artist, who claimed to have been saved from certain death by the felt and fat of Tatar nomads. The bamboo canes here seem to be holding up the clothes, pinned in place like specimens beneath a naturalist’s magnifying glass. The work is born of Michel Aubry’s realisation, back in 2003, that the flight suit worn by Beuys was equipped with a sophisticated thermal insulation system developed by military scientists and allowing the wearer to survive in hostile, arctic environments. Michel Aubry makes frequent use of costume in his performances, to represent artists such as Rodtchenko, Tatline, Alfred Jarry, Le Corbusier, Moholy-Nagy or Albrecht Dürer. In Ernst Jünger’s Coat he delicately embroiders a series of small insects, their colourful forms coming to represent the medals that the Francophile German author earned for his military service in both world wars, and notably during his time as a Wehrmacht officer in Paris from 1941 onwards.
gilles saussier
Born in 1965, Suresnes. Lives in Les-Andelys and works in Arles and Les-Andelys. For the past decade Gilles Saussier has been crafting his experimental take on photographic documentation, challenging and destabilising our definitions of memory and imagery. Saussier constantly re-examines the interpretation, meaning and purpose of series’ of images, many drawn from his previous career as a photojournalist, approaching photography as a performative act and combining anthropological perspectives and the legacy of minimalism in an exploration of the documentary tradition. Sinea is a project focusing on the Southern Carpathians, native region of the celebrated Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (18761957). This project follows the course of the River Jiu from Petrosani, where the Endless Column was created in 1937, and Târgu Jiu, where it was erected in 1938 (the two towns are around fifty kilometres apart). Saussier’s work thus combines an examination of Romania’s recent history with an exploration of modern sculpture and a reflection on the landscape and its transformations. The work incorporates various lesser-known facts turned up during the artist’s own research, including
the discovery of a copy of the Endless Column produced in 2001 in the workshops of the mines at Petrosani (ACP), where the original was made. This industrial site employed as many as 4000 workers up until the 1989 revolution, now reduced to a mere hundred. As well as highlighting the essential reproducibility of the column, this story is a reminder of the role of the factory’s design office in restricting Brancusi’s vision for the project (the column stands 29.33 metres tall, though the artist had originally envisaged 60 m), as well as casting light on the slow disappearance of a tradition of craftsmanship which at its peak was almost an art in itself.
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Gilles Saussier Le tableau de chasse, cimetière des pauvres, [Results of the hunt. Paupers’ cemetery] (Timisoara, Romania) 1989 – 2010, pigment print on Canson Platine Rag paper, 90 x 170 cm.
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Sinea, Travanti, ou pierre de rivière, Jardin de la maison Balanesco ou séjourna Brancusi à Târgu-Jiu [Travanti, or river stone: Garden of the Balanesco house where Brancusi stayed while in Târgu Jiu] (Romania) 2014, polymer ink print 62 x 78.5 cm on Gmund paper 70 x 100 cm. Michel Aubry Mise en musique du pantalon de Beuys après le crash [Musical accompaniment to Beuys’ trousers after the crash], 1944 – 2009, sheepskin, leather and canvas trousers, bakelite tubes and reeds. Collection FRAC BasseNormandie. Mise en musique de la combinaison de vol de Beuys avant le crash [Musical accompaniment to Beuys’ flight suit before the crash], 1942 – 2003, flight suit on hanger, cotton undersuit on hanger. 170 x 65 x 10 cm. Collection FRAC Basse- Normandie.
Léa Le Bricomte Flag, ribbons from various military medals, wall support, 2013, 150 x 90 cm. Dripping Medals, sculpture (augmented military medals and ribbons), 2012, 180 x 223 cm. Free Riders, sculpture (9 x 18-pounder shells with skateboard wheels), 2011-2012. Mandala, firearm cartridges (various calibres), wood, metal, 2013, 35 x 160 x 160 cm. Lance, RF flagpole, leather straps, pearls, feathers and wood, 2013, 180 cm. © Léa Le Bricomte. Courtesy Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris. ©Adagp, Paris, 2014.
Le manteau d’Ernst Jünger [Ernst Jünger’s Coat], 2011, wool, fur and embroidery. Galerie Eva Meyer. Lustre [Chandelier] 1914 – 2002, stake posts from trench network, Sardinian canes, sixteen silver reeds. Height 160 cm x diameter 160 cm. Galerie Eva Meyer. Tables, 1914 – 2003, stake posts from trench network, objects collected in Alsace from WWI battlefields. I. Récipients [Recipients] c. 100 x 260 x 160 cm. II. Munitions c. 100 x 180 x 140 cm. III. Outils [Tools] c. 100 x 140 x 110 cm. IV. Cuisine et campement [Kitchen and camp] c. 100 x 170 x 110 cm. V. Réseaux de tranchée [Trench network]. ca. 100 x 220 x 160 cm. Five tables arrange in a rosette formation: c. 400 x 360 cm. Galerie Eva Meyer.
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patrick tosani
Born in 1954, Boissy-l’Aillerie. Lives and works in Mayet and Paris What makes a monument monumental? It is not merely a question of scale, this sense of grandeur requires an imposing sense of presence, a capacity to direct and dominate the observer’s eye. Patrick Tosani photographs his subjects against a neutral background, tightly framed and isolated from their context. This intense focus on the subject simplifies our reading of the image, presented in its unassailable wholeness and capturing that sense of visual impact which defines the monumental. For his ice cube series, Tosani photographed ancient ruins in much the same manner as the pioneering photographers who first captured images of Egypt and the Near East on film. He then cut out imitations of architectural forms from newspapers, burning them after encasing them in ice. The photographs convey this sense of coldness, petrifying the objects at a precise moment. More significantly, they reproduce the successive steps in the transformation experienced by these materials, expressed in a startling visual shorthand which is at once solid and liquid, permanent and ephemeral. These ancient edifices are frozen in a strange new state, they have become ‘pre-ruins’. Paysage (Landscape) is a highly constructed image. A sliced-up shoe, featured in several other of Tosani’s works, is seen against a white backdrop which is itself severely broken up. The shadows cast into the background conjure up a strange, deserted landscape. With a degree in architecture, the artist is used to working with models, but is not interested in presenting an illusory, miniaturised vision of the world. What fascinates Tosani is the ability to play with perceptions of scale and visibility, exploring the registers in which monuments communicate with us: personification, memory, the dichotomy between the real and represented spaces.
tom molloy
Born in 1964, Waterford, Irlande. Lives and works in Rouen. Tom Molloy is fascinated by ideas of power, and particularly the power of images. His works challenge our perception of images, subverting and manipulating the context of their presentation until their content itself becomes altered. By deconstructing the modalities of display and appearance, Molloy exposes the extent to which our relationship with imagery is conditioned by codes of presentation. In Operation, 89 cheap frames are hung backwards. As such it is not just the image which
is inverted, but the whole context of its display. This gesture somehow feels familiar, like turning away a photo frame out of sadness or anger. The installation features black-and-white photos of 89 soldiers killed in Afghanistan during ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. Arranged in a precise grid formation, the frames thus evoke images of coffins lined up for burial, or gravestones in a cemetery. The variety of frames used restores some individuality to each fallen soldier, making the impersonal nature of their death and commemoration all the more poignant. For his piece Monument, Molloy amassed 1059 postcards featuring WWI cenotaphs, an accumulation of miniaturised tributes which comes to resemble a monument in its own right, or perhaps a meta-monument. Stacked from the ground up, this teetering tower is at the mercy of its environment, open to attack like all monuments in public places. The contact plate used in Contact reproduces 36 of the most striking images in the history of war photography. It also serves as a tribute to the photographers behind these works, from Roger Fenton’s pioneering photographs of the Crimean War in 1853 right up to the images of torture in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. All of the images are reproduced in black and white, and with no respect for chronology, producing an overwhelmingly immediate reminder of the unchanging nature of the horrors of war.
valérie collart
Born in 1981, Bordeaux. Lives and works in Copenhague, Danemark. These images, entitled Monument I-II and III, are taken from a series of photographs from 2010 and 2011 entitled Falsities. These shots show the war memorial in Nice, located on the Place Guynemer and here totally obscured by a tree which seems to have taken its place, fitting perfectly within the vaulted arch as if planted and pruned for this precise purpose. This substitution is at once physical and symbolic. By removing the tree the artist attempts to rediscover both the monument and the collective memory it embodies, reviving the trauma of war. In the photographs which make up the Falsities series, the surface of the image is physically degraded using sandpaper in a forceful re-examination of the relationship between photographic technique and physical intervention, a reappraisal of the materials which form the tangible basis of photography. This is not merely a question of images and surfaces, but of creating an entirely new material. The chemical components of the inks used in printing the photographs react in different ways to this erosion,
stripping back layers to reveal unexpected nuances of colour. The results is an entirely new image, a meta-image somewhere between reality and imagination, abstract and concrete.
EDITION N°1
MAY 2014
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carole fékété
Born in 1970, Alger. Lives and works in Paris. Across her body of work, from studies of reliquaries in the gardens of Versailles to the painting of Christ by Philippe de Champaigne now kept in the Louvre, via the pilot’s scarf preserved in Calais’ 1939-1945 Museum, Carole Fékété explores the way in which images of an object can transform the object itself. Photography, by its monumentality, suspends history at the point where war and peace meet.
Patrick Tosani Hauteville, 1983, colour photo (C-print), 120 x 157 cm. Projections, Paysage [Projections, Landscape] 2006, colour photo (C-print), 164 x 212 cm. Intérieur, externe [Interior, external], 2006, colour photo (C-print), 52 x 68 cm. © Patrick Tosani, Adagp 2014. Courtesy Patrick Tosani & Galerie In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc, Paris. Valérie Collart Monument I, II et III, 2010, standard print eroded with sandpaper, 30 x 20 cm.
Carole Fékété Les statues – Jardin du Château de Versailles [Status – Gardens of the Château de Versailles], 20052006, photographic prints – matt framing, 240 x 120 © Carole Fékété. Escape Map, silk escape map, RAF, WWII. Collections of the Musée de la Mémoire 1939 – 1945, Calais, photograph and analogue print on aluminium panel, 2013, 100 x 120 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, acquired thanks to the support of the Regional Museums’ Acquisition Fund (national government/Conseil Régional du Nord-Pas-de- Calais), n°inv. 2013.1.1. © Carole Fékété.
Tom Molloy Operation, Installation (89 framed photos), 2013, framed black-and-white photographs, 130 x 330 cm. Monument, 2013, postcards (around 1059 cards), 32 x 16 x 11 cm. Contact, 2010, black and white photograph, 20 x 25 cm. Courtesy Tom Molloy et Rubicon gallery Dublin.
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liane lang
Born in 1973, Munich. Lives and works in London. Liane Lang is fascinated by monuments which have lost their meaning, raising questions regarding their conservation or destruction. This series of miniature bronze sculptures is based on old photographs of monuments now lost or damaged. Often these statues did not survive the downfall of the figures they celebrate. Designed and constructed to last forever, preserving the legacy of their heroic subjects for generations to come, these statues were ultimately dismembered, decapitated or even strung up as if they were real bodies. In a particularly ironic twist, many of the statues derided as relics of a feudal past – such as the Prussian Emperor on horseback, the Tsar on his throne, or Bismarck resplendent – were melted down by the revolutionaries to create new statues in honour of Lenin, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. This ideological recycling shows that even the supposed permanence of bronze is relative. The photographs exhibited here are taken from Monumental Misconceptions, a series of twenty images taken during the artist’s residency in Budapest, Hungary, and focusing largely on the Memento Sculpture Park created on the outskirts of the city to house the majority of the region’s Soviet-era statues and protect them from destruction after 1989. Hyper-realistic silicon mannequins are positioned amid these monumental relics. The immense statues form a striking contrast with the life-sized models, made to look disarmingly harmless, vulnerable and humble in comparison. Our perception of these statues is necessarily informed by their historical context, and coloured further by the power of photography to infuse them with new life. The artistic failure of these sculptures is thus thrown into sharp relief.
jocelyn
cottencin
Born in 1967, Paris. Lives and works in Rennes. Jocelyn Cottencin invited troupes of dancers to put their own spin on the emblematic monuments of Calais, Caen and Norwich. In a joint project bringing together three institutions from these partner cities, the artist, graphic designer and typographer worked with 12 choreographers and performers that he knows well. This collaborative performance was above all an attempt to capture, reinterpret and reflect upon the collective significance of the monuments in question.
Following a precise methodology defined by the artist (with images and description of twenty monuments and specific details of the sequences of movements and the colour of clothes to be worn), his drawings and images were brought to life by the choreography and improvised expression of the dancers, working solo or in groups. Influence also came from works by artists including Delacroix and Gericault, as well as the physical characteristics and construction techniques which define the bunker. The succession and transition between movements, the isolation or concentration of the dancers, the separation and connection of their bodies all serve to create not only images, but also a sense of monumentality. The work plays on numerous registers: literal, rhetorical, allegorical, ironic, fantastic, emotional, playful, figurative… What started life as a typographical project based on the word ‘Monument’ and destined for promotional materials has taken on a life of its own, becoming a vibrant, moving work of art: Monumental. The monuments on which this work is based have thus provided inspiration for a new visual alphabet, a series of choreographed performances, a film and various visual representations.
antoine durand
Born in1985, Paris. Lives and works in Paris. Antoine Durand: “A few war memorials in France, about a dozen of the more than thirty thousand erected after the First World Ward, can be described as ‘pacifist.’ They present a clear anti-war message, offering a clear contrast with all those monuments devoted to the glorification of the heroes who died for their motherland, all part of the postwar propaganda. This war kicked off a century filled with unprecedented horrors, involving more men, more deaths and more material destruction than any war the world had ever seen. And what did France get from it? What did we win? In these photographs, my aim is to pay tribute to those elected officials of the early twentieth century who understood the need for a commemorative monument to the dead, but realised that the supposed victory in that war was unclear and Pyrrhic at best, staring that terrible, unimaginable carnage in the face and hoping dearly that it would not happen again.”
didier vivien
Born in1960, Saint-Denis. Lives and works in Savy Berlette and Lille. Didier Vivien has a longstanding fascination with documentary photography (the work of Eugène Atget and Walker Evans in particular), and all of his photo series can be considered to a certain extent as ‘archaeology of the present’, examining society from two main perspectives: technology (energy, waste, speed, dematerialisation etc.) and culture (the economy, life after industry, the lived environment, memory etc.). Three of his projects have taken war as their theme. The first, Gegen Engeland, was based on photographs of a blockhaus at Audresselles taken in 1994, set alongside archive images. In 2012 he published Paris is a Trap, in collaboration with Xavier Boissel, investigating the creation of an artificial, illuminated model of Paris in order to confuse German pilots during the First World War. But Vivien’s most substantial reflection on the war is his ongoing project 1914[Cold memories]2018. Starting in 2005 at the facility in Vimy where unexploded bombs from the First World War are stored, the artist has been regularly visiting different military cemeteries, as well as photographing the battle sites around Arras as they are now (agricultural land, roads, industrial zones, retail parks, allotments etc.).
Liane Lang Revolutions, bronze sculptures taken from the Monumental Misconceptions collection, 2013, dimensions between 20 x 20 x 30 cm for each sculpture. Top to bottom and left to right: Hitler, Bismarck, Kwame Nkrumah, Shah, Saddam, Wilhelm I, Tzar Alexander, Lenin, Dherzhinsky, Staline.
Monumental Misconceptions, 5 C-print photographic prints on aluminium panels, 140 x 110 cm et 100 x 80 cm.
The title is intended to convey the EDITION neutralisation of memory operated N°1 MAY 2014 by the objectivising practice of booklet photography. Does an archaeologicallyn°3 ordered collection of cases filled with old explosives not carry a certain air of monumentality? The website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which records the names of these victims and the locations of the cenotaphs and memorials found in even the most far-flung corners of the former British Empire, is this not also a form of invisible, impossible monument?
Antoine Durand Monuments Pacifistes [Pacifist Monuments], collection of 6 ‘postcard-style’ photographs.
Jocelyn Cottencin Graphic and visual design of the exhibition and digital magazine, creation of a specific typeface, 2014. Monumental, video projection, 2013 featuring Yair Barelli, Nuno Bizarro, Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Volmir Cordeiro, Mathieu Doze, Madeleine Fournier, Yves Noel Genod, Elise Olhandeguy, Carole Perdereau, Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz, Loïc Touzé.
Didier Vivien 1914 [Cold Memories] 2018, 4 albums of 40 x 30 cm, 72 pages each. © Didier Vivien.
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jocelyn
cottencin
Born in France, 1967. Jocelyn Cottencin lives and works in Rennes. Jocelyn Cottencin invited troupes of dancers to put their own spin on the emblematic monuments of Calais, Caen and Norwich. In a joint project bringing together three institutions from these partner cities, the artist, graphic designer and typographer worked with 12 choreographers and performers that he knows well, including Loïc Touzé and Emmanuelle Huynh. This collaborative performance was above all an attempt to capture, reinterpret and reflect upon the collective significance of the monuments in question. Following a precise methodology defined by the artist (with images and description of twenty monuments and specific details of the sequences of movements and the colour of clothes to be worn), his drawings and images were brought to life by the choreography and improvised expression of the dancers, working solo or in groups. Influence also came from works by artists including Delacroix and Gericault, as well as the physical characteristics and construction techniques which define the bunker. The succession and transition between movements, the isolation or concentration of the dancers, the separation and connection of their bodies all serve to create not only images, but also a sense of monumentality. The work plays on numerous registers: literal, rhetorical, allegorical, ironic, fantastic, emotional, playful, figurative… What started life as a typographical project based on the word ‘Monument’ and destined for promotional materials has taken on a life of its own, becoming a vibrant, moving work of art: Monumental. The monuments on which this work is based have thus provided inspiration for a new visual alphabet, a series of choreographed performances, a film and various visual representations.
maya balcioglu
and stuart brisley
Born in Turkey, 1955 / England, 1933. Maya Balcioglu and Stuart Brisley both live and work in London. Cenotaph is a work from a collaborative project between Maya Balcioglu and Stuart Brisley that began in 1987 with Brisley’s residency at the Imperial War Museum, London. They were interested in an architectural model of Edwin Lutyens’ Whitehall Cenotaph, an iconic monument originally erected as a temporary wood and plaster structure for the peace parade at the end of the First World War which proved so popular that it was replaced with a permanent memorial on the same site in 1920. Together, Balcioglu and Brisley initiated a series of exhibitions which generated an increasing number of identical cenotaph models. This model is the prototype of these. At approximately one-fifth scale of the original, its dimensions were dictated by the average ceiling height (seven feet six inches) of a council flat. The work was built to be shown at St. Cuthbert’s village in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. Initially painted grey, the colours of the cenotaphs changed with each exhibition until, in their final showing, the sixth was isolated and painted a subdued poppy red. Cenotaph is shown here for the first time in over 20 years. As a focus of public meetings and discussion at each exhibition site, these works signal many of Balcioglu and Brisley’s core concerns with the way in which works of art can facilitate our engagement with the social and political.
jeanne gillard
and nicolas rivet
Born in France, 1983 / France, 1983. Jeanne Gillard and Nicolas Rivet live and work in Geneva. These works are a continuation of the tradition of carving sculptures from soap established in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s to popularise the products of Procter & Gamble. Significantly, they are part of a larger project researching and representing sculptures that have been removed from their public sites, displaced or destroyed as a result of war, violence, vandalism or political censorship. Soap is brittle, fragile and soluble. It is a material with temporary solidity, and is associated with hygiene and purity. It aptly personifies the way in which public monuments attempt to make
temporary cultural values permanent. It reminds us how the presence of certain monuments can be intolerable to subsequent powers, and to those who wish to replace the values they represent. These small detailed works seem inoffensive now and it is difficult for us to discern the contexts, passions or politics that would have led to their demise.
EDITION N°1
MAY 2014
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paul pouvreau
Born in France, 1956. Paul Pouvreau lives and works between Paris and Arles. In Untitled, 2000, a monolithic cardboard tower on a trolley is accompanied by a strange scene in a photograph, in which a child is taking aim at the photographer hidden by a bucolic landscape printed on a ‘Pardon et fils’ cardboard box. From this arises the tension of a war landscape, evoked both by a child’s game, and the playful artistic context of the giant box-tower. The images are both banal and evocative and viewers have to find their own way through their double meanings. Paul Pouvreau’s investigations focus on the representation of landscapes; architecture in the urban landscape; and the status of images and their capacity to transcend their usual categories (publicity, documentation, decoration or dramatisation). His work reveals a deep interest in venues or objects which have been abandoned. For him, cardboard boxes could represent a city, and small buildings could be built with boxes, creating confusion between the status of the represented object and the real object. Pouvreau extends his idea of the landscape to the exhibition space, where the viewer is invited to experiment with this confusion and to re-evaluate his or her usual experience of images, architecture and the city.
Maya Balcioglu and Stuart Brisley The Cenotaph Project 1987–91, MDF, 222.3 x 177.8 x 137.2 cm. Courtesy of the artists.
Jeanne Gillard and Nicolas Rivet Soap Sculpture (Emile or On Education) 2013, soap, 40 x 20 x 20 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Soap Sculpture (Iron Curtain End) 2013, soap, 55 x 30 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Soap Sculpture (Young Obama Unwelcome Guest) 2013, soap, 55 x 30 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artists.
Jocelyn Cottencin Graphic and visual design of the exhibition and digital magazine, creation of a specific typeface, 2014.
Soap Sculpture (Fritz Fall Echoes Jura) 2013, soap, 40 x 20 x 20 cm. Courtesy of the artists.
Monumental 2014, HD video 47’, colour, sound Performed by Yaïr Barelli, Nuno Bizarro, Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Volmir Cordeiro, Madeleine Fournier, Matthieu Doze, Yves-Noël Genod, Elise Olhandeguy, Carole Perdereau, Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz, Loïc Touzé. Courtesy of the artist.
Soap Sculpture (Hand Shows Armenian Purge) 2013, soap, 40 x 20 x 20 cm. Courtesy of the artists.
Paul Pouvreau Sans-titre, (Untitled) 2000, cardboard boxes on trolley, 450 x 250 x 125 cm. Photograph, 120 x 160 cm. Courtesy of the artist and SCRAWITCH, gallery, Paris.
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antoine durand
Born in France, 1985. Antoine Durand lives and works in Paris. Antoine Durand: “A few war memorials in France, about a dozen of the more than thirty thousand erected after the First World Ward, can be described as ‘pacifist.’ They present a clear anti-war message, offering a clear contrast with all those monuments devoted to the glorification of the heroes who died for their motherland, all part of the postwar propaganda. This war kicked off a century filled with unprecedented horrors, involving more men, more deaths and more material destruction than any war the world had ever seen. And what did France get from it? What did we win? In these photographs, my aim is to pay tribute to those elected officials of the early twentieth century who understood the need for a commemorative monument to the dead, but realised that the supposed victory in that war was unclear and Pyrrhic at best, staring that terrible, unimaginable carnage in the face and hoping dearly that it would not happen again.”
renaud
auguste-dormeuil
Born in France, 1968. Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil lives and works in Paris. These images capture views of the night sky immediately before an event of notorious carnage and destruction. Using digital technology, the artist recreates the constellations above precise locations on the preceding night. These include the bombing in Dresden by the Allies at the end of the Second World War; the bombardment of Baghdad when the coalition allies joined the war against Iraq in the first Gulf War; the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre, New York; and the night before the US and British armies invaded Iraq in 2003. Auguste-Dormeuil plays with our understanding of the form a memorial might take and the point at which an event becomes significant. As strange and beautiful as the night sky itself, these images can be seen to represent a universe unconcerned with human tragedies, or the calm before the storm; the build-up of tension and the anticipation of conflict. They tackle issues of premonition, fate, astronomy, astrology and meteorology which all have a part to play in the plans for war and acts of aggression.
rémy jacquier
Born in France, 1972. Rémy Jacquier lives and works in Bouzillé, a village near the city of Nantes. Alusage is created as a monument which is intentionally enigmatic. It is part of the Cabaret Diderot series in which the artist has processed texts from a number of works by French philosopher Denis Diderot (1731-1834) and translated parts of them into braille, which he transformed into threedimensional volumetric forms. The title derives from the words ‘Á l’usage’ (for the use of), present in the titles of two of Diderot’s written works: Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient (Letter on the blind for the use of those who see, 1749) and Lettres sur les sourds et les muets à l’usage de ceux qui entendent et qui parlent (Letters on the deaf and the dumb for the use of those who can hear and talk, 1751). The monument was created by a conflation of the text and image, the readable and the visible, yet its character derives as much from its uniform black-painted surface, which is intended to confuse the vision and blur the understanding of its spatial character. It is both a physical and metaphorical representation of blindness and a comment on the history and philosophy of aesthetics.
olga boldyreff
Born in France, 1957. Olga Boldyreff lives and works in Nantes. Olga Boldyreff ’s parents were exiled from Russia during the communist regime. Early in her life she developed a strong motivation to recall past memories through her indirect history with Russia. Boldyreff attempts to resolve the enigmas of her ancestors’ past, using drawing, painting, writing, sculpture, performance, photography, video and even radio. The artist found in Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) a place where she could build memories of her own. Full of contradictions, this city is emblematic for her of a contentious relationship with memory, where she can both create her own associations and lay to rest the ghosts of the past. In that sense, through her interest in the siege of Leningrad (1941-1944), Boldyreff tries to depict memories via histories both of people who survived this terrible period and from their descendants. She chooses the media of charcoal, graphite powder and dry pastel for their unstable, fragile and volatile qualities. She attempts to show on the surface of the canvas the image of a re-composed memory which acquires a collective dimension not so different from a classical monument.
benjamin
sabatier
EDITION N°1
MAY 2014
Born in France, 1977. Benjamin Sabatier lives and works in Paris. Benjamin Sabatier’s practice takes in media as diverse as performance, sculpture, painting or works in kit form. He also creates shows as ‘manifest exhibitions’, in which the context of the venue and its social and political history are part of the meaning. Exhibited in the context of the University of East Anglia, Crushed II could be read as a witty echo of the ‘New Brutalist’ architecture of the campus by Denys Lasdun. One of the themes common to all Sabatier’s work is a reflection on the processes of production in a post-industrial society, as it applies to the art world in particular. In 2001, he created his own company IBK (International Benjamin’s Kit) making reference to three different historical sources; the German philosopher Walter Benjamin; the French artist Yves Klein and his creation of IKB (International Klein Blue); and the Swedish company IKEA, well known for its flat-pack furniture. IBK aims to make art accessible to all.
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Renaud AugusteDormeuil The Day Before_Star System_ Dresden_February 12, 1945_23:59, 2004, inkject print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac BasseNormandie, Caen, France. The Day Before_Star System_ Baghdad_January 15, 1991_23:59, 2004, inkjet print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac BasseNormandie, Caen, France.
Antoine Durand Maudite soit la guerre et ses auteurs, (Cursed be war and its perpetrators), 2013, postcards, 10.5 x 14.8 cm each. Courtesy of the artist.
Rémy Jacquier Alusage, 2006, cardboard and wood, 80 x 58 x 42 cm. Courtesy of Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris.
Benjamin Sabatier Crushed II, 2014, cement and wood, 220 x 100 x 100 cm. Courtesy of Galerie Bodson, Brussels.
The Day Before_Star System_ New York_September 10, 2001_ 23:59, 2004, inkjet print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac BasseNormandie, Caen, France. The Day Before_Star System_ Baghdad_March 18, 2003_23:59, 2004, inkject print mounted on aluminium, 170 x 150 cm. Collection Frac BasseNormandie, Caen, France.
Olga Boldyreff Blokada Leningrada, (The siege of Leningrad), 2012–2013, charcoal, graphite and pastel on canvas, 54 x 73 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
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boris chouvellon
Born in France, 1980. Boris Chouvellon lives and works in Paris and Marseille. Sans-titre (Untitled), a series of fifteen photographs taken on the site of a fairground in Hyères, about 50 km from Marseille, offers us a reflection on power, decay and the passage of time. Overseeing us from a great height, these once-powerful flags used to tell a story of patriotism and authority, but today, worn out by the wind, they are the emblem of the modern state of nations, vulnerable and always on the edge of a crisis. Two fundamental aspects of Boris Chouvellon’s work are expressed in these photographs. One is the observation and exploration of a common environment, the other is a sharp criticism of modern society and its contradictions. The two elements are tightly correlated in his images and his sculpture. With an eye for the decadence of objects that pervade modern society, Chouvellon shows us, not without irony, the stale state of things of our time. Interview with the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDMNpz2Y-Ag
john mcdonald
Born in England, 1949. John McDonald lives in London and has been working metal for over 45 years. This large-scale work serves as a monument to a complex range of references and experiences central to the artist’s work. John McDonald was a passenger in a London Underground train carriage exploded by a bomb in the attacks of July 2005. Made by hand in McDonald’s studio without the use of heat or machines, this work is more broadly a monument to the skills of making, and a tribute to the metalworkers who taught him as their apprentice, than any direct comment on the devastating attack. In turn, these mentors were survivors of the Second World War and were, for McDonald, an early and dignified example of how to keep living after extreme trauma. In this grand cylinder, McDonald conjures the forms, rhythms and patterns of other times, drawing predominantly on medieval cathedrals for inspiration, though guided also by memories of the industrial metal pipes which he once had to work inside.
andrew burton
Born in England, 1961. Andrew Burton lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This work by Andrew Burton takes its title from the poem The Second Coming by WB Yeats, 1919, written in the aftermath of the First World War. Presenting us with an architectural structure at the moment of tension between stability and collapse, the sculpture literally represents a line in the poem: ‘Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.’ Though monumental in scale and ambition, the work undermines the notion of permanence inherent to a monument and is instead fragile, disintegrating and incomplete. Things Fall Apart is one of a series of recent works by Burton that uses thousands of tiny handmade bricks. Working in Britain, India and the Netherlands, he has used and reused these bricks to make sculptures that are continually recycled. Through this process of salvage, each sculpture contains in these broken glazed parts an echo or memory of previous works. Burton works with a variety of media, including clay, bronze and stone as well as more ephemeral materials such as bamboo or chilli peppers.
mark edwards
Born in England, 1965. Mark Edwards lives in Norfolk. A photographer who is interested in the poetics of landscape, Mark Edwards has an eye both for the stillness of the land observed, and for the subtle signs of human intervention. Over a long period, Mark Edwards has been making visits to East Anglia’s redundant Second World War airfields. At a site in Hethel, just outside Norwich, he chanced upon a collection of extraordinary huge wood piles, covered for protection while they seasoned over winter. This was one of the airfields from where planes took off in order to take part in D-Day by flying support missions and bombing German gun batteries, airfields and positions for the Normandy invasion. For someone sensitive to historical associations, the place was highly atmospheric. The stacks of wood and the roofed covering made them look remarkably like shelters, which they became in Edwards’ imagination. The final stimulus for him was the call for artists issued for the Monument exhibition. As a result, he used his original negatives to create large-scale illuminated black and white images, redolent of period newsreel film, of what have now become monuments to the soldiers and aircrew who flew in 1944 to join the battle against German forces in occupied France.
marcus vergette
EDITION N°1
Born in England, 1961. Marcus Vergette lives and works in Devon. For centuries, bell foundries have cast bells in times of peace and cannons in times of war. Marcus Vergette, a sculptor, filmmaker, musician, composer and farmer based in Devon, designs and produces his bells using digital software and the latest casting techniques. Re-modelling this ancient communication device, the artist explores its history, meanings and physical properties, creating a process that embraces both art and engineering. Ringing a bell has always been the privileged act of authority, secular or spiritual. Marcus Vergette’s bells are in the public space, free to be rung by anyone at any time, and thus they convey a radical freedom. Silent, Beat, Silent makes no exception. We invite you to embark on your own ritual journey by ringing the bell.
MAY 2014
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andré dunoyer
de segonzac
France, 1884-1974 A drawing can be a quiet monument. This portrait of a First World War soldier was acquired by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury from the artist in 1939, appropriately, at the start of the Second World War. There is a pensive and war-weary look on the soldier’s face. The image expresses something about determination and service. He stands for those who gave themselves modestly and bravely out of duty to their country and its cause.
Andrew Burton Things Fall Apart 2008–2014, fired clay, adhesive, indicative dimensions: 223 x 300 x 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Mark Edwards Shelter #1 2014, photograph in light box, 122 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Shelter #2 2014, photograph in light box, 120 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Boris Chouvellon Sans-titre, (Untitled) 2007–2011, series of 15 photographs, 120 x 80 cm each. Courtesy of the artist.
John McDonald Monument, 2011–2014, mild steel and stainless steel, 300 x 195 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Antoine Durand Maudite soit la guerre et ses auteurs, (Cursed be war and its perpetrators), 2013, postcards, 10.5 x 14.8 cm each. Courtesy of the artist.
Shelter #3 2014, photograph in light box, 122 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Shelter #4 2014, photograph in light box, 122 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Shelter #5 2014, photograph in light box, 122 x 152 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Marcus Vergette Silent, Beat, Silent 2013, bronze, stainless steel and lead, 115 x 145 x 85 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
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The project TAP has been selected within the frame of the INTERREG IV A France (Channel) – England cross-border European cooperation programme, part-financed by the ERDF.
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monumental jocelyn cottencin
Context. I think what interests me most is the transmission and reception of images, codes and languages, or more broadly speaking the capacity of a project and a piece of work not to delineate some sort of finite territory, but to circulate between different positions. This notion of circulation is of fundamental importance. There are a number of different ways you could describe it: transformation, mutation, organic movement. The idea is that this is a living system which never stops moving. Movement is essential. Vital.
‘Monumental’ is an intuitive response to the proposal presented to me by the three curators1 of the Monument exhibition, and it also stems from the close relationship I have developed with the field of choreography over the past 15 years. A mixture of speed and gradual unfolding, immediacy and slowness. My work is often described as blurring the boundaries between different disciplines: graphic design and visual art, performance and scenography, books and film. In that sense my relationship with choreography came about organically. ‘Monumental’ is a logical extension of my other work, using choreography to expand my visual vocabulary. The roots of ‘Monumental’ can be found in the collaborative relationships I have formed with a number of choreographers (Daniel Larrieu, Nathalie Collantes, Alain Michard, Loïc Touzé and Emmanuelle Huynh). With them in mind I came up with a set of visual proposals, but above all with spaces and concepts which evoke some of the themes that I have explored in other disciplines – not least our relationship to imagery – and pose certain questions: how can a performance evoke images without fixing them in any kind of permanent form, how can we maintain the freedom of the imagination, how can we resist the temptation to pass comment or look for definite answers? In some respects, the situations I have sought to create in LOVE,2 Ô MONTAGNE3 and Tozaï…!4 are inseparable from such questions. ‘Monumental’ aims to tap into a collective, visual memory composed of iconic representations from history, particularly the history of art, as well as the iconography of the media and of contemporary events, simultaneously evoking Gericault and Kiev, Ucello and Occupy Wall Street. 1. Barbara Forest, curator at the Musée des Beaux arts de Calais, Veronica Sekules, Deputy Director at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, Sylvie Froux, director of the FRAC Basse Normandie (Caen). 2. LOVE by Loïc Touzé and Latifa Laâbissi , artistic collaboration with scenographic concept by Jocelyn Cottencin, performed by Rémy Héritier, Maud Le Pladec, Yves Noel Genod, Carole Perderau, Audrey Gaisant and Julien Galée Ferret, lighting by Yannick Fouassier. This performance piece was staged in 2003 at the Théâtre national de Bretagne., ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� .���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Ô MONTAGNE by Loïc Touzé, scenographic concept by Jocelyn Cottencin, performed by Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Madeleine Fournier, Elizabete Francisca, Gianfranco Poddighe and Teresa Silva, music by Jonathan Seilman, lighting by Yannick Fouassier. Performed in 2013 at TU Nantes. 4. TOZAÏ… ! by Emmanuelle Huynh with Pascal Queneau. Sonography and set concept by Jocelyn Cottencin and Matthieu Doze, lighting by Sylvie Garot, technical direction by Christophe Poux, creation and interpretation by Katerina Andreou, Jérôme Andrieu, Bryan Campbell, Volmir Cordeiro, Madeleine Fournier and Emmanuelle Huynh. Dance consultant: Lisa Miramond. This performance will be staged on 12th June 2014 at CCN de Montpellier.
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‘Monumental’ is a reflection on the meaning and iconography of monumentality, as expressed in the partner cities of this programme (Caen, Calais, Norwich). I have imagined and created a set of visual scores inspired by sources such as statues and architecture, public memorials and contemporary art. I have intentionally gravitated towards these iconographic sources on account of their inherent sense of narrative and form. Each of the selected monuments is reinterpreted and reproduced by the gestures of the performers, following my score. The performance thus becomes a succession of poses which are by turns abstract and narrative, symbolic and formal, grotesque and unsettling, amusing and serious. The result is a mixture of spatial poetry and spontaneous invention, a new perspective on familiar allegorical and historical themes. Movement. The forces at play in each monument are clearly defined by the gestures, but not set in stone. What I’m looking to achieve is a certain precision in the performative expression of each individual element of the story. With each new gesture the image is not reiterated, but reinvented. The actions themselves may differ from one performance to the next, but they are all underpinned by the same issues. The visual scores also adhere to certain rules and protocols, with instructions such as “be external to what is going on, provide a counterpoint or context to this sequence.” The aim is not to straightforwardly represent the building or sculpture in mime form, but to offer up an interpretation which is structured in response to specific preoccupations: narrative, figure, form, architecture. The work of the performers cannot be reduced to a succession of static poses or an attempt to put a name to a specific image, it’s a question of perpetual movement with moments of suspension. This movement is primordial, it is about awakening, evoking and appealing to the collective imagination and its relationship to the body and to history. The images appear one after the other, overlapping and interacting. Putting aside ideas of meaning, narrative and clarity, what I wanted to do was to play with signs. Evoking without ever naming is a way of opening up a space which sketches a vision of reality
rather than aiming for figurative representation, giving free rein to the imagination. ‘Monumental’ is also about play, about creating an environment using colour and very simple objects. The clothes are selected to create a chromatic palette which evokes the monuments, with various shades of blue, brown, grey and gold accented with splashes of red and orange. These clothes are arranged on the floor in a specific order, then used, abandoned and reused as the different sequences unfurl, but always kept outside or on the fringes of the space which has been defined as the ‘plinth’. The gradual accumulation of these garments, and the way the dancers transform them into absurd, abstract and even tragic items, feed into the action unfolding before us and enhance its evocative power. The presence of other objects seemed to me a necessary counterweight, an additional element capable of opening up a new perspective on the bodies in motion. I chose the sticks because they are at once abstract and suggestive of play. They could evoke weapons or trophies, but also architectural forms, signs, tools, masts. Presented in different sizes, but always in the same colours used in the clothes, these sticks evoke a sort of living Mikado sculpture, defining the contours of the ‘plinth’. Ideas of groups, collectiveness and coalition are very important to me, and are at the heart of many of my projects. By definition, a group already has its own history, or rather it allows me to create my own narrative, to express a desire. It offers a landscape in which to situate my work and ideas. As I started to think about certain figures and stories, I was naturally reminded of some of the choreographers with whom I have worked in the past. In some cases we have established a dialogue which goes back many years. Meeting creators such as Yves-Noël Genod, Matthieu Doze and Loïc Touzé had a huge impact on my work, and more recent encounters with Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz, Yaïr Barelli, Carole Perdereau, Nuno Bizarro, Volmir Cordeiro, Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Madeleine Fournier and Elise Olhandéguy have been just as significant. This group represents my history and my relationship with the art of dance.
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Rebound. This project started life as an order for visual communication material for the Monument exhibition. Suffice to say I have a taste for digression. One facet of my work is connected to graphic design, a discipline which by its very nature invites combination and cross-pollination of ideas and forms. What fascinates me about graphic design is its capacity to encompass various formats, all of which are intended to infiltrate the public space (posters, books, documents etc.). All of these networks are conduits for the circulation of words, images, signs and symbols. This makes graphic design an exciting arena for experimentation, even if it is often restricted by certain constraints, clichés and conventions. To explore the idea of communication, and to extend these mechanisms of displacement and transformation, I embarked upon a typographic project. Typography is a code. For me it serves as an invitation to symbolic, aesthetic and formal reflection. Letters are derived from drawings, but evolve from figurative representation towards the abstract, becoming components in a code. I invert that evolution, working backwards towards drawing and imagery. My letters are to be seen, not read, allowing imagery to subsume the words. In this project the visual score which inspired ‘Monumental’ also provided the basis for my new alphabet. The typography is based on a combination of different monuments. The posters feature three photographs taken from the performance, a different image for each of the exhibition centres. Here again, there are no permanent, unchanging images. Perspective. ‘Monumental’5 is a film, but also a performance. Or vice versa. In its ‘live’ incarnation I plan to modify the visual score in response to the setting, incorporating new monuments and maintaining a sense of playfulness and flexibility. I would like to take this work further, and explore contemporary ideas of what constitutes 5. Monumental performance and film by par Jocelyn Cottencin Performed by Yaïr Barelli, Nuno Bizarro, Bryan Campbell, Ondine Cloez, Volmir Cordeiro, Madeleine Fournier, Matthieu Doze,Yves-Noël Genod, élise Olhandeguy, Carole Perdereau, Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz, Loïc Touzé. Coproduit par Frac Basse-Normandie (Caen), Musée des Beaux Arts (Calais) Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (Norwich)
a monument. And why not use dance as a means of representing the financial crisis, global warming or even more vast and ambitious historical narratives? Phenomena which are truly ‘monumental’.
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spectre
robert foster
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
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And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed, And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Ozymandias of Egypt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817 157
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Robert Foster Performance at the Frac Basse-Normandie, 21 february 2014
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J’ai rencontré un voyageur venu d’une terre antique Qui m’a dit : « Deux immenses jambes de pierre dépourvues de buste Se dressent dans le désert. Près d’elles, sur le sable, À moitié enfoui, gît un visage brisé dont le sourcil froncé, La lèvre plissée et le sourire de froide autorité Disent que son sculpteur sut lire les passions Qui, gravées sur ces objets sans vie, survivent encore À la main qui les imita et au cœur qui les nourrit. Et sur le piédestal il y a ces mots : “Mon nom est Ozymandias, Roi des Rois. Contemplez mes œuvres, Ô Puissants, et désespérez !” À côté, rien ne demeure. Autour des ruines De cette colossale épave, infinis et nus, Les sables monotones et solitaires s’étendent au loin. » Ozymandias of Egypt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817
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Robert Foster After the performance on the 21st of February 2014, Shelley’s poem written on a A4 paper was pined up on the wall from the 22nd February to the 13th April 2014.
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shel-
ter mark edwards
My father was in the RAF. It was for this reason that we moved to Lincolnshire. Growing up in a county that has been called Bomber County I have always been fascinated by the old World War II airfields and their palimpsestic nature within the landscape. Over the course of the years I have made a few attempts to photograph them but could never find a motif that transcended the overly nostalgic.
When I first discovered the woodpiles at Hethel I knew immediately I wanted to photograph them. I initially photographed them in colour but was dissatisfied with the results. Continuing to walk around the base, walking the family dog, I spent the time looking, thinking and reading about the site and its involvement in the air campaign without photographing the structures. During this time of reflection I became aware that they should be photographed in black and white as this seemed to emphasise the sculptural elements of the woodpiles.
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‘Monument’ gave me the opportunity to make a series of work I have been looking to make for over twenty years.
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View of the ground glass as seen from behind the camera. Image is always upside down on a view camera.
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One of the first colour images.
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‘The artistic self also engages personally in such a reconstruction, pledging itself, as Weiss sees it, to set up a memorial, and the painful nature of that process could be said to ensure the continuance of memory’ WG Sebald. On the Natural History of Destruction (p177) RAF Hethel, Norfolk was built in 1942 and served as an operational base for 389th, USAAF Eighth Air Force Group. It’s primary function focused on strategic objectives in France, the Low Countries, and Germany. Amongst their intensive air campaigns the group participated in the Normandy invasion in June 1944 by bombing gun batteries, airfields and enemy positions in addition to flying support and interdictory missions. For the past eighteen months I have been working on a series of colour photographs depicting woodpiles found on my walks around the perimeter roads on this now decommissioned WW II base. Built from the enveloping coppiced woodland and sitting amongst the last vestiges of dilapidated military buildings, perimeter tracks and barbed wire, these woodpiles allude to a form of shelter reminiscent of the forest camps found in Primo Levi’s ‘If Not Now, When?’ and intriguingly, strangely mirroring W.G.Sebald’s vision of Cologne and other bombed out cities across Europe at the end of hostilities when he describes the ruins and makeshift shelters as being ‘transformed by the dense green vegetation growing over them - the roads made their way through this new landscape like peaceful deep-set country lanes’.
Some of the dispersal tracks and runways are now used by Lotus Cars for manufacturing and testing and the roar of these engines is somewhat fitting as it puts me in mind of the noise the B-17 and B-24 bombers must have made as they took off on their nightly voyages into enemy territories.
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These woodpiles, built for storage and to repel the rain in order that the wood can dry out, stand as monuments to these campaigns, it’s participants, victims, its aftermath and memory: 3.4 million tons of allied bombs dropped, 131 German cities attacked, 3.5 million homes destroyed, 7.5 million homeless, 12,000 heavy bombers shot down, 100,000 allied airmen lost amongst countless civilian victims. ‘Shelter’ is a new series of five large scale black & white lightboxes (122cmx152cm each) depicting these sculptural monuments within the context of the contemporary and historical landscape. Printed onto an archival opaque film (‘Duratran’) and lit by a uniform wall of LED lights these back lit transparencies are a contemporary reference to the cinematic newsreels of he 1940’s in addition to them acting as beacons within the exhibition space. Each one will become a monument to ensure that we do not forget what, for the majority of us, we did not know or experience. Mark Edwards
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Shelter No.IV
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artists’ web sites
and links
Adela Babanova www.jirisvestka.com/artist-detail/ adela-babanova Maya Balcioglu www.mayabalcioglu.com/ Pascal Bauer pascal-bauer.blogspot.fr cargocollective.com/PascalBauer Benoît Billotte www.benoitbillotte.com Olga Boldyreff olgaboldyreff.blogspot.com/ Stuart Brisley www.stuartbrisley.com/ Andrew Burton www.andrewburton.org.uk/ Boris Chouvellon www.borischouvellon.com Valérie Collart www.valeriecollart.com John Cornu
www.johncornu.com Jocelyn Cottencin www.jocelyncottencin.com Antoine Durand antoinedurand.com Mark Edwards www.markjedwards.com Leo Fabrizio www.leofabrizio.com Carole Fékété www.carolefekete.com Robert Foster www.axisweb.org/artist/robertfoster robertjohnfoster.wordpress.com/
Jeanne Gillard et Nicolas Rivet Portfolio complet : bit.ly/16ICqtF Swiss Art Awards : bit.ly/18pdxY1 Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen www.jacquelinehoangnguyen.com
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Rémy Jacquier remyjacquier.blogspot.fr
Benjamin Sabatier www.ibk.fr www.bodsongallery.com/ benjamin-sabatier/
Liane Lang www.lianelang.com
Gilles Saussier www.gilles-saussier.fr
Micha Laury www.michalaury.com
Patrick Tosani www.patricktosani.com
Léa Le Bricomte www.lara-vincy.com
Sylvie Ungauer sylvieungauer.blogspot.fr
Simon Le Ruez www.simonleruez.net
Marcus Vergette www.marcusvergette.co.uk/
Virginie Maillard www.virginiemaillard-photographie. com
Didier Vivien www.zerologie.net
Matthieu Martin www.matthieumartin.fr
Renaud Aurguste-Dormeuil www.macval.fr/francais/collection/ oeuvres.../renaud-auguste-dormeuil
John McDonald, makingurbantotem.blogspot.com Mick Peter www.mickpeter.com/ Paul Pouvreau www.scrawitch.com/en/paulpouvreau 171
collector edition making
This online edition is designed to be printed “at home” and become a singular editorial object. It consists of 4 separate booklets and cover, printed on 5 different papers and assembled in one edition by a wide elastic.
STEP 1 :
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Download 5 files at the following links:
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www.lieuxcommuns.com/monument/edition1/0-COUVERTURE-EN.pdf www.lieuxcommuns.com/monument/edition1/1-CALL.pdf www.lieuxcommuns.com/monument/edition1/2-EXHIBITIONS.pdf www.lieuxcommuns.com/monument/edition1/3-WORKS.pdf www.lieuxcommuns.com/monument/edition1/4-ARTISTS.pdf
booklet n°4
STEP 2 :
Print the 5 files. Print Recto Verso. Careful, the bookbindinge is on the short side. Follow the formats and paper specifications for each file.
wo rks of art 3
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BOOKLET 1 Call for proposals for the Monument exhibition
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Presentation of the 3 exhibitions
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A4 90 g coated white
ar tis t s 4
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A4 90 g uncoated blanc
STEP 3 :
Fold and assemble each notebook. Staple.
STEP 4 :
To maintain all, assemble the 5 booklets into each other and drag in the central double page a wide elastic (minimum 1cm wide length 20 cm). And now a collector’s edition.
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The project TAP has been selected within the frame of the INTERREG IV A France (Channel) – England cross-border European cooperation programme, part-financed by the ERDF.
editorial
management:
Sylvie Froux, directrice du Frac Basse-Normandie Veronica Sekules, deputy director of the Sainsbury centre for Visual Arts, head of research and education Barbara Forest, directrice du musée des beaux-arts de Calais Jocelyn Cottencin, artiste et graphiste
editorial team:
Sylvie Froux, directrice du Frac Basse-Normandie Anne Cartel, assistante d’expositions, chargée du service culturel et du mécénat Chloé Hipeau, chargée de communication et de documentation Veronica Sekules, deputy director of the Sainsbury centre for Visual Arts, head of research and education Amanda Geitner, chief curator at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Antoine Huet, project assistant at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Barbara Forest, directrice du musée des beaux-arts de Calais Marie Astrid Hennart, responsable de la programmation culturelle et de la communication du musée des beaux-arts de Calais Laurent Moszkowicz, coordonnateur du Jardin des arts, Communauté d’agglomération du Calaisis Rebecca Drew, Head of Finance and European Programmes, Fabrica, Brighton Tracey Gue, Digital Communications Coordinator, Fabrica, Brighton Jocelyn Cottencin, artiste et graphiste
contributors:
Mark Edwards et Jocelyn Cottencin Vittorio Ricchetti, curatorial intern at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Pour le musée des beaux-arts : Natacha Haffringues et les artistes Carole Fékété, Virginie Maillard, Antoine Durand, Pascal Bauer, Michel Aubry, Gilles Saussier
graphic
conception:
Jocelyn Cottencin /Atelier Lieux Communs avec la collaboration de Chloé Hauser et Bruno Kervern
thanks to:
Pour le SCVA : The artists: Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Maya Balcioglu and Stuart Brisley, Olga Boldyreff, Andrew Burton, Boris Chouvellon, Richard and Sarah Cocke, Jocelyn Cottencin, Antoine Durand, Mark Edwards, Jeanne Gillard and Nicolas Rivet, Rémy Jacquier, John McDonald, paul pouvreau, Benjamin Sabatier, Marcus vergette, The voice project.
Les financeurs et les collègues : Arts Council of England, Metro imaging, UK, Clare Karslake Amy Chang, Charley Ramm, EDIBecca Sturgess, Nell Croose Myhill, TION N°1 Antoine Huet, Vittorio Ricchietti, MAY 2014 Sarah Bartholomew Pour le musée et le Jardin des arts : La ville de Calais, la Communauté d’agglomération du Calaisis, le département du pas-de-Calais, la région Nord pas-de-Calais, La Direction régionale des affaires culturelles du Nord pas de Calais, L’association des conservateurs des musées du Nord Pas de Calais et tous les artistes : Michel Aubry, pascal Bauer, Benoît Billotte, Boris Chouvellon, Valérie Collart, John Cornu, Jocelyn Cottencin, Antoine Durand, Carole Fékété, Liane Lang, Léa Le Bricomte, Virginie Maillard, Tom Molloy, Paul Pouvreau, Gilles Saussier, Laurent Sfar, Patrick Tosani, Sylvie Ungauer, Didier Vivien Pour le Frac Basse-Normandie : Région Basse-Normandie ; le Ministère de la Culture, Drac Basse-Normandie. The artists: Adela Babanova, Pascal Bauer, Benoît Billotte, Boris Chouvellon, Jocelyn Cottencin, Carole Fékété, Robert Foster, Jeanne Gillard et Nicolas Rivet, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Rémy Jacquier, Léa Le Bricomte, Simon Le Ruez, Matthieu Martin, Mick Peter. Frac Basse-Normandie : Caroline Caillet, Anne Cartel, François Desloges, Chloé Hipeau, Mathilde Johan, Magali Kerdreux. Rebecca Drew. Le Musée de L’Armée, Paris.
translation:
For the SCVA: Francoise Delas-Reisz For the MBA: Société HANCOCK-HUTTON For the Frac: Simon Thurston
photographic credits:
For the SVCA: Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Maya Balcioglu and Stuart Brisley, Olga Boldyreff, Andrew Burton, Boris Chouvellon, Jocelyn Cottencin, Andy Crouch, Antoine Durand, Mark Edwards, Jeanne Gillard and Nicolas Rivet, pete Huggins, Jean-philippe Humbert, Rémy Jacquier, John McDonald, Paul Pouvreau, Benjamin Sabatier, Marcus Vergette For the musée des beaux-arts de Calais : Pascal Bauer et la School Gallery/Olivier Castaing / Sonia Chanel / Valérie Collard / John Cornu. Courtesy Ricou Gallery, Bruxelles & Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris / Gabriella Cseh / Carole Fékété / Marc Domage / Courtesy Michel Aubry et Galerie Eva Meyer / Patrick Tosani et Galerie In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc, Paris / Léa Le Bricomte et la Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris / Virginie Maillard / Tom Molloy et Rubicon Gallery Dublin / Paul Pouvreau (Galerie Scrawitch) / Florian Kleinefenn / Fabien Marques / Musée des beaux-arts, Calais / Adagp, Paris, 201 For the Frac : Marc Domage, les artistes;
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Fonds régional d’art contemporain Basse-Normandie 9 rue Vaubenard - 14000 Caen Tel. : +33(0)2 31 93 09 00 www.frac-bn.org
25 rue Richelieu - 62100 Calais Tél. : +33(0)3 21 46 48 40 musee@mairie-calais.fr www.musee.calais.fr
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ +44 (0)1603 593199 www.scva.ac.uk The Undercroft below the War Memorial, City Hall, Norwich, NR2 1NH
Le projet TAP a été sélectionné dans le cadre du programme européen de cooperation transfrontalière INTERREG IV A France (Manche) – Angleterre, cofinancé par le FEDER. The project TAP has been selected within the frame of the INTERREG IV A France (Channel) – England cross-border European cooperation programme, part-financed by the ERDF.
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© graphisme et Typographie Jocelyn Cottencin / atelier Lieux communs - © Image : “Monumental” jocelyn cottencin (2014)
Musée des beaux-arts de Calais