La Colonie: Bonne Vacances
"La Colonie" artists-in-residence (from left) Thérèse Mastroiacovo, Martin Dufrasne, Isabelle Lapierre, Sébastien Guigère, Eugénie Cliche, Geneviève Crépeau, Matthieu Dumont, Geneviève Lapierre, Jean-Michel Ross, Annie Baillargeon, Nicolas Laverdière and Jasmin Bilodeau, June 2010 / photo Sandrine Lambert
As summer sets in with record-breaking temperatures this week, the thoughts of many have drifted to the pressing concerns of a vacation retreat. To mark its 25th anniversary, the Quebec City artist-run centre L’Oeil de poisson finds its own getaway with “La Colonie,” an exhibition-cum-summer camp that fills the village of Deschambault-Grondines with installations and performances by BGL, Martin Dufrasne, Geneviève et Matthieu, Milutin Gubash, Les Fermières Obsédées, Thérèse Mastroiacovo, Graeme Patterson, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi and Kim Waldron. Here, exhibition curator Jean-Michel Ross speaks with Bryne McLaughlin about history, displacement and the fun to be had when art goes on vacation.
Bryne McLaughlin: “La Colonie” is presented as a kind of free-for-all summer camp where contemporary art takes over the historic village of Deschambault-Grondines. Let’s start with the obvious question: What’s the connection between L’Oeil de poisson and Deschambault-Grondines?
Jean-Michel Ross: L’Oeil de poisson was already planning for their 25th anniversary when they had an invitation from Deschambault-Grondines to organize a project around an artist residency. There had been a previous collaboration between the village and the gallery involving the artist Georgia Volpe. But it was really the director of heritage and culture for Deschambault-Grondines who contacted the gallery and said we have these wonderful historical sites and instead of just having these didactic panels explaining the actual history it might be nice to have contemporary art in these spaces. The area has deep ties to the beginning of the Quebec colony. Jacques Cartier’s second trip actually stopped in Deschambault, which was a key military position because the river runs very narrow at that point. Samuel de Champlain also visited the site but decided to found Quebec City five years later a little further up the river. Now you have 20,000 people going there every summer to see these historical sites. So the place has deep links to both historical and modern ideas of a colony.
BM: It seems quite amazing for the regional cultural representative to step forward with this kind of proposal.
J-MR: It is really amazing for them to imagine something different for these historical sites. My first reaction was is the art going to be stuck in a corner somewhere? How heavy are the restrictions going to be? On the contrary, they opened up the doors to the whole village and they told us we could use whatever we want. So the artists in “La Colonie” had access to all kinds of interesting spaces—an old mill, an historical presbytery, a music school—all of which are mostly empty and typically used for historical displays.
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BGL Le Buché 2010 Installation view |
BM: So the location is loaded with the legacy of colonization. How much of that played in to your choice of artists and your overall curatorial premise?
J-MR: Colonization was a big question for me. I kept thinking: Would I go into something more political? How do we actually talk about the colony today? In the post-colonial era and especially with modern communications, we don’t need to physically invade a space to exchange, appropriate or impose culture. So when I started considering artists I was thinking more about displacement. I had this idea of a colony of artists who could bring their different colours to these heavy spaces and be festive. I did have the political discussion in the back of my mind, but in the end it wasn’t the thing I wanted to go for.
BM: The artists had a two-week residency in June and the resulting works are installed for the rest of the summer in a number of sites throughout the town. For those of us who are too far away to actually make the trip to Deschambault-Grondines, could you “walk” us through the exhibition?
J-MR: Of course. Starting on the first floor of the village presbytery, BGL have recreated a huge bonfire in plexiglass called Le Buché, which in French means not just “bonfire” but also the actual stake when you burn someone. This is their typically humourous take on the idea of fire being something that destroys but that also makes new things possible. It’s also a kind of critique of the avant garde always trying to go further into the future in order to break with aspects of the past. So they’ve burned an historical site without actually burning it. There’s also the question of traditional colonial culture that is still very present in Quebec—the bonfire at Saint-Jean-Baptiste, for instance. There were a couple of Bibles scattered around playing on the whole religious aspect.
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Les Fermières obsédées Épopée par ricochet 2010 Performance still / photo Etienne Boucher |
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