CARTE GRISE À RAYMONDE APRIL


L’EAU RENVERSÉE (SAINT-JUSTE-DU-LAC)
Patrick Coutu, Charles Guilbert, Serge Murphy, Marie-Christine Simard + Raymonde April

The exhibition runs from April 17 to May 25, 2002.
A full colour publication with text by Raymonde April accompanies the exhibition.

When I was little I thought it was L’Eau Renversée. But this crossroads is actually called Lots-Renversés, because the lots or parcels of land slated for settlement were marked off at a right angle to those of Saint-Juste. Lots-Renversés is part of Saint-Juste, whose total population has been recorded at 677. Wherever you may want to go from Saint-Juste-toward Auclair and Squatec, Trois-Pistoles and Rimouski, or Dégelis and Edmundston-you have to pass by Lots-Renversés, or "the Lots." Each time I go by there, and even each time I attempt to relate the experience when back in Montréal, I feel a catching in my throat and find it hard to contain my emotions.

Raymonde April, excerpt from the publication L’eau renversée.

Dazibao’s annual exhibition Carte Grise, provides an opportunity to discover a particular artist’s view on contemporary photography through an exhibition and a publication. Within this context, Raymonde April has chosen to present a singularly orchestrated project: instead of simply offering a series of works that have been outstanding or significant in her own creative development, the artist proposes a rereading of the artists’ works she has chosen through a video projection. In Raymonde April’s hands, even the curatorial process leading to an exhibition becomes a creative gesture.

Sequencing and inventing new associations between images is inherent in Raymonde April’s practice. L’eau Renversée (Saint-Juste-du-Lac) is a passage of photographic and moving images, intertwining the work of Patrick Coutu, Serge Murphy, Marie-Christine Simard, Charles Guilbert as well as some of her own. The artists all have in common a connection, at one point or another, with a village called Saint-Juste-du-Lac in the region of Temiscouata. This little known place, endowed with a very particular aura for Raymonde April, serves as a denominator, or backdrop for the project.

Passing landscapes seen through a car windshield spotted with rain, wind rippled waves on a lake, an outdoor meal, a red toy boat being propelled through the air on a piece of driftwood… In this exhibition we are transported to Saint-Juste-du-Lac as it lies somewhere between spring and fall, between real and suspended time. The strangely familiar landscapes and characters evoke memories and stories, as they are recounted, invented and recorded by the five artists.

Raymonde April was born in 1953 in Moncton, New-Brunswick, and grew up in Rivière-du-Loup in Eastern Québec. She lives and works in Montréal where she has taught photography at Concordia University since 1985. Since the end of the 1970s, her practice as a photographer and an artist has been based on the everyday, blending the documentary, autobiography and fiction. Her work is regularly shown across Canada and abroad. Numerous solo exhibitions with catalogues have been dedicated to her work since Voyage dans le monde des choses, organised by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 1986. Among her most recent solo shows, Les Fleuves invisibles, produced by the Musée d’art de Joliette in 1997, travelled across Canada and France. Her recent film Tout embrasser, completed in the fall of 2000, was the basis of an exhibition presented at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery of Concordia University (Montréal) in September 2001, where she explored relationships between photographic and filmic images through recurrent themes, and featured over 500 unpublished images.

Patrick Coutu was born in 1975. Galleries Clark (Montréal), l’Écart (Rouyn-Noranda), l’Espace Virtuel (Chicoutimi) and B-312 (Montréal) have recently held solo exhibitions of his work and he has participated in several group exhibitions. In 2001 he took part in the exhibition L’effet du logis held at Studio Cormier (Montréal), as part of La saison de la France au Québec, and in the event Des nouvelles de Tchekhov presented at Galerie Plein-Sud (Longueuil). He was a guest artist at Artifice 98 organized by the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts. In the near future his work will be seen at the Musée du Québec (Mélanie Boucher, curator) and at Galerie Glassbox in Paris. His work takes various forms-sculpture, photography, intervention and drawing. He works in Montréal and has always spent his summers at Saint-Juste-du-Lac.

Charles Guilbert was born in Montréal in 1964 and studied literature at university. He lives and works in Montréal. In his open artistic practice, he freely explores various art forms and seeks to establish new connections between them. In his videos, writings, songs or drawings, he creates playlets where the banal and the extraordinary, reality and fiction meet. Using pared down forms, he mainly addresses the everyday, speech and relationships between beings. Guilbert has written fiction and a book entitled Les Inquiets (1993), made the record Rien ne t'aura, mon cœur (1997) and produced several video installations which have been presented in museums, galleries and festivals in Canada, Mexico, numerous European countries (Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Spain) as well as Japan. In the spring of 2001, his installation Les Personnes was exhibited at the Casino in Luxembourg, and in the winter of 2002, Sortir de soi will be presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Liège.

Serge Murphy lives and works in Montréal where he was born in 1953. He creates sculptures that spread out in space, as well as videos (in collaboration with Charles Guilbert) that are both narrative and experimental. His work has been exhibited in solo shows in Québec, Canada and Europe. In the fall of 2001, he presented Autels de fortune at gallery Occurrence (Montréal). He has also participated in several group exhibitions in the United States, Colombia, Europe and Canada. Recently, his work Le Jardin de mon curé was part of the exhibition Le Ludique at the Musée du Québec. His videos have been presented in numerous galleries, museums and festivals in Canada, France, The Netherlands, Mexico and India. In 1998 Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in Québec and Les Instants vidéo de Manosque in France presented a retrospective of his works. Serge Murphy’s work is part of several public and private collections.

Marie-Christine Simard lives and works in Montréal where she was born in 1962. She holds an M.F.A. from Concordia University and has taught there since 1995. She has participated in several group exhibitions, including Ode au quotidien at Vox (Montréal) and Séquence (Chicoutimi) in 1997 and 1998, and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery (Montréal) in 1996. In 2002 her most recent work La traversée will be presented in Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Richmond as part of the exhibition Unexpected Encounters. In 20 years she has created numerous unforgettable meals.