Private view Saturday 29 November 2014, 3:30 – 8:30 pm


“The victim has been killed, he can’t be resurrected, it is over and done. What remains to be seen is whether our interest can be roused, and for instance whether we can turn it into a story. A sad thing it was, no doubt, very sad; but we can't mend it. Therefore let us make the best of a bad matter; and, as it is impossible to hammer anything out of it for moral purposes, let us treat it aesthetically, and see if it will turn to account in that way.”

Thomas de Quincey, De l’assassinat considéré comme un des beaux-arts, 1854 


I’d long wanted to do a sculpture of a female figure lying down. Then I came across an amateur video on the internet, of a protester being dragged and beaten by soldiers during a popular demonstration in favor of democracy on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, on 17 December 2011.

The image of the “Girl in the blue bra” was seen all over the world, and became a symbol of the Egyptian people’s insurrectional movement, but also of the aggressive behavior of men and of their sexual harassment of women during these events (some sixty assaults in four days).

The connection between my artistic concerns and this mistreatment of women was blindingly obvious to me.

Relating the beauty, sensuality and fragility of the female body, a classical theme in art history, to the violence societies inflict upon human beings at every level, whether openly or not, tied in with my wish to build a prone body, to find formal resolutions and to play on them, but also to try to adapt my concerns to the world of today.

 

Françoise Vergier – born in 1952, lives and works in Paris and Grignan.

Since the early 1980s, Françoise Vergier’s sculptures have been haunted by the female figure: she started out working with painted wood, then turned to ceramics. For this new exhibition, the major pieces are made of plaster, her preferred medium today, though she still draws and works with ceramics. Once more, Françoise Vergier invites us to share her personal experiences, her artistic preoccupations but also the emotions that current events arouse in her.

In 2004, Françoise Vergier presented her work in a solo exhibition at the Carré d’Art in Nîmes, then in 2012, at the Galerie Municipale of Vitry-sur-Seine. She has taken part in many group shows, including at the Maison Rouge,