“Andrew?” is a collaborative project instigated by the Lamarche-Ovize duo during their nine-month residency at La Galerie. The exhibition brings together fifty ceramic pieces created during workshops by invitees from different fields : visual artists, dancers, musicians, writers and other groups sharing specific interests. In Noisy-le-Sec participants were members of the Municipal Music and Dance Conservatory, employees of the Parks and Gardens department, and women from the socio-linguistic workshops at the Le Londeau social welfare centre. In Noisy-le-Grand they came from the Fortuna association, which organises historical pageants. Being almost or totally unacquainted with ceramic techniques, all participants were on the same amateur footing during the workshop sessions. In this way clay became the sole means of expression, abolishing the boundaries between the participants’ highly specialised practices. Beginning in September 2012, the project took the form of a series of micro-residencies in which the two artists guided participants stage by stage through the ceramics process : shaping, drying, glazing and firing. There was a clearly defined understanding from the outset : each participant was to produce a single piece, the sole constraint being imposed by the size of the kiln : 40 x 40 x 40 cm. The piece would be lent for the duration of the exhibition and Lamarche-Ovize would be in charge of its presentation, while taking into account any suggestions from the maker as to how it should be shown. Once the pieces were completed, Lamarche-Ovize would provide an interpretation via an exhibition with all the standard features : plinths, labels, signing, map, journal, etc. In this way Lamarche-Ovize would be functioning at the junction of the various components of the exhibition, interconnecting the contributions according to ideas, shapes, creators, colours, narratives and atmospheres ; the works would be treated on a case by case basis, in all their singularity, with no resort to any system or overarching idea. Andrew, who has lent his name to the exhibition, is a nude model slipped into this narrative via Laetitia Paviani’s use of the name as a title for her ceramic piece, but he is also a mirror for the duo’s position in the workshop during these last few months : a close, almost daily observer of each experiment, he guides and reveals, while constantly challenged by this question mark he cannot shake free of and which prevents him from every really achieving closure.

Émilie Renard

Translated by John Tittensor