Category Archives: Uncategorized

George Trakas in Lamelouze (Gard)

Du sec à l’eau (Dry to Wet)

The village of Lamelouze, situated in the Galeizon valley north of Alès, is part of the Cévennes National Park. Many professional and cultural associations are located there, with whom the municipality keeps a close partnership.

In 2009, the commune invited the Sentiers association to carry out artistic experiments on 14 hectares of communal land, situated between the 11th century church of Sainte-Cécile and the Galeizon river. The former landowner had begun a forestry operation and created an arboretum.

On the initiative of several residents, the Sentiers association and the Lamelouze Commune asked Georges Trakas to design a practical work for this space, which offers the only public access to the river. The request is part of a desire to enhance the land and its landscape, and its quality as a common space in the geographic and social organisation of the commune so that it is “recognised” by all – Lamelouze residents as well as occasional users.

After a visit in August 2015, George Trakas wrote, “I felt the project was destined for me. The commission appealed to me and it was right, because I fell in love with the locals and their history.”

During a second stay during summer 2016, acting on his initial intuitions and observations, George Trakas proposed a path to access the Galeizon as well as a simple installation between the arboretum and the river.

A study book combining texts and drawings was published by Captures éditions. It retraces the artist’s reflection – related to his career and works – his approach guided by the human dimension of places. The selection of George Trakas’ drawings and technical data for the creation of Du sec à l’eau  (Dry to Wet) offers a pragmatic and poetic approach to the commissioned work.

Le 28 mai 2019, Du sec à l’eau a reçu le prix « Initiatives citoyennes et environnementales » par le CAUE du Gard.

Marie-Ange Guilleminot in Gaillac

The Space Between!

“An artist could invent a work for the children that we receive to introduce a minimum, vital, of disorder that provokes thought.” The Medico Pyschological Centre for children and adolescents ­– independent of the hospital – is an interface of social ties and the psyche, of the social and clinical subjects: A place of circulation and of interception of flux from the vast world, of suspension also…The waiting room appears as an intermediary space between the treatment itself and the outside world, officiating like these anti-chambers where one whispers before speaking. To think of a work for the CMPEA would be to allow children who are dealing with digital technology too soon and too much – often impoverishing thought – an unedited emotional and intellectual encounter.”

Washitsu or Cabin in Time

Sculpture with dismountable architecture in wavy maple. Installed in the current waiting room, it compliments Meuble-spirale (Spiral Furniture). Its minimal conception around the unit of a tatami (rush-covered straw mat forming a traditional Japanese floor covering) creates a unique space for the child. It is based on the attentive observation of the Japonese washitsu tradition, from which the artist sought essential form, with a single module….To preserve the spirit of the place ­– tokonomo – or the space for art – shoji –sliding doors in wood and Japanese paper reinforced with, here in felt, removable shutters.

…du meuble spirale au meuble infini…(…from spiral furniture to infinite furniture…)

Placed in the reception area, the Meuble-spirale (Spiral Furniture) aims to transform and be placed freely in the CMPEA location. Both a piece of furniture and a sculpture, hexagonal in shape, it is made out of fourteen mobile elements with colourful sides, with multiple, playful uses: library, drawing table, little theatre. The work is open to appropriation by its users; it is an invitation to creativity.

L’objet-étalon (Measuring Object)

Similar to the Meuble-spirale at life-size scale, L’objet-étalon is composed of fourteen autonomous elements. The idea of the scale is to be able to think with the object in your hands, of all sorts of combinations applicable to the furniture-sculpture. It is created with fourteen types of wood: refer to the colour chart for positioning the sides of the Meuble-spirale according to colour.

Production

Washitsu or Cabin in Time: Yutaka Kawahara and Renaud Vergnais  (carpenters), Cécile Feilchenfeldt and Géraldine Odeyer

…du meuble spirale au meuble infini: Jacques Vignon
L’objet-étalon: Patrick Belle

Advice/ coordination: Paule Guérin, Murielle Hladik, Sabine Laurent, George-Henry Ser
Games/ spinning tops:  Philippe Dyon
Contribution to choice of books: Les Trois Ourses

Press folder, February 2017 – pdf

Patrons: CMPEA team, Gaillac – Karine Beziat, Éric Bousquet, Daniel Delbes, Sylvie Faure, Marie-Claude Garros, Sophie Mahenc, Fabienne Maviel, Marie-Josée Medale, Maria Puech-Maurel, Laurence Quercy, Pauline Ricard, Catherine Scarpulla, Sabine Vialettes, Vassiliki Xenoyanni

Funding: Fondation de France, Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation

Fondation Bon Sauveur d’Alby

2017

Credits: Marie-Ange Guilleminot

Camille Henrot in Pailherols, Cantal

My montagne

Since the height of Antiquity, the Cantal mountains have been part of farmers’ lives by providing them with summer pastures for their livestock. For four months, men aged between 12 and 70 watched over the herd and the quality of cheese produced in a grandiose landscape with a harsh climate. These cowherds or “buronniers” were masters of a pastoral economy that has now disappeared.

Farmer Jean-Paul Soubeyre, wanted to honour the memory of these buronniers who left a deep mark on the social and economic life of these lands known as summer pastures or transhumant. Convinced of the need to “make an act of recognition” for these men, the Pailherols Commune and the Sauvegarde des burons du Cantal association joined forces to support him with his project.

The artist Camille Henrot was invited to imagine a work that bears witness to a powerful human story and to the close link between man, animal and landscape. This contemporary work is neither a monument to the dead nor a folkloric endeavour, but a part of the universal history of pastoral farming.

At the entrance to the village, in an enclosed garden, Le Vestiaire du berger (The Shepherd’s Hut) marks a symbolic departure point for a trek up to the summer pastures.  Forms suggestive of familiar objects recall the buronnier’s universe and work. The Vestiaire emphasizes the fact that these traditional objects are no longer in use, but also the possibility that this is only a temporary state. Then, like an invitation to roam, My Mountain spreads out along a hiking trail into the countryside. The artist created around forty sculptures inspired by the form of the fence or movable barrier used by the cowherds to corral their herds. Their forms reference the Trigrammes of I-Ching (The Book of Transformations), in which there are sixty-four combinations that describe the states of the world and their evolution. Here, in a confined space, the sculpture park appears as a constellation that recalls the universal contemplation of the starry heavens and sends us back to infinity. White in colour, the fences disappear into the snowy landscape in winter only to reappear again each spring.


Press release, June 2016-pdf

Patrons: Association pour la sauvegarde des burons du Cantal and the Pailherols Commune.
Mediation/ production: Valérie Cudel and Mari Linnman for the New Patrons Programme initiated by Fondation de France.
Funding: Fondation de France (New Patrons Programme), Fondation Carasso, Minister of Culture and Communication under Public Commission in partnership with DRAC Auvergne Rhône Alpes, Pailherols Commune, Cantal Department, Cère and Goul Communauté de communes, Association pour la sauvegarde des burons du Cantal.

Inauguration: June 2016
Press release, June 2016
Photographic credits: Phoebé Meyer

 

Christophe Terlinden, Emmanuel Lambion et Iwan Strauven à Beaumont, Puy-de-Dôme

Pietro

The Beaumont municipality invited Christophe Terlinden and the TILF collective to rethink the connections that unite the city with its residents. In 2003, reflection began on the identity of this commune in the Clermont agglomeration, then in full evolution. This would comprise mixed housing construction, the creation of a green path, the Maison des Beaumontois, and an extension of the Chataigneraie (chestnut grove) protected wooded area.

These changes engender the need to re-qualify public spaces – in particular the historic centre – and to take action towards breaking the image of a dormitory town, open up neighbourhoods and encourage residents to rediscover their town.

Building on the recently created green path, Christope Terlinden teamed up with Emmanuel Lambion and Iwan Strauven to create a sculptural drawing that connects the city’s different strata. The PIETRO is a combination of pedestrian and metro. It constitutes four routes that are marked out by disks of enamelled lava, laid out like an urban network. Each path is identified by a separate colour – blue, red, yellow or white.

The routes are shown in the form of a metro map that is embedded in benches, placed at crossings and at the end of paths. The map also appears in a publication, a fold-out leaflet that presents a subjective perception of the Beaumont sites with eight drawings by Christope Terlinden on the verso.

PIETRO is a playful work with the ambition of promoting a different reading of the city for Beaumont residents as well as the occasional visitor.


press folder, November 2007 – pdf

plan du pietro, dessins verso Christophe Terlinden

Patrons: elected officials from the Beaumont municipality and members of the Ideas for Beaumont association.

Funding: Fondation de France (New Patrons Programme), Minister of Culture and Communication (DAP-DRAC Auvergne), the town of Beaumont.

2007