Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes
Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes
Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes
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60<br />
<strong>Les</strong> Prairies's artists<br />
HELEN MIRRA<br />
Hourly Directional Field Notation, Arizonan Sonoran Desert, 6 January, 2012, 2012.<br />
Photography of <strong>the</strong> artist. Courtesy of <strong>the</strong> artist and galery Nelson-Freeman, Paris.<br />
Co-production<br />
<strong>Les</strong> <strong>Ateliers</strong> <strong>de</strong> <strong>Rennes</strong> 2012,<br />
Frac Bretagne.<br />
Avec le soutien <strong>de</strong>s Verrières –<br />
rési<strong>de</strong>nces-ateliers <strong>de</strong> Pont-Aven et<br />
d'Itinéraire Bis – Galerie du Dourven.<br />
Walking is an integral part of Helen Mirra's method of production. It structures her choice of<br />
process. The works realised for <strong>Les</strong> Prairies result from a process begun in 2010 which she<br />
has used from exhibition to exhibition and from country to country, <strong>the</strong> i<strong>de</strong>a being that at<br />
each exhibition <strong>the</strong> fruits of an earlier resi<strong>de</strong>nce elsew<strong>here</strong> are displayed while she works<br />
on new stuff while in resi<strong>de</strong>nce. Thus, from one exhibition to ano<strong>the</strong>r a nomadic oeuvre<br />
gets created indirectly, with titles such as Field Recordings and Field Notation that reflect<br />
her outdoor habits. The works displayed at <strong>Rennes</strong> were produced in <strong>the</strong> winter of 2012<br />
in Arizona; those that she has produced in Brittany during <strong>the</strong> summer of 2012, between<br />
Brocélian<strong>de</strong>, Pont-Aven and Trédrez-Locquémeau, will be presented in Tokyo. Hourly<br />
Directional Field Notation, Arizonan Sonoran Desert are <strong>the</strong> fruit of a week's walking in<br />
<strong>the</strong> Sonoran Desert after <strong>the</strong> manner of <strong>the</strong> early American pioneers. On every one of her<br />
daily perambulations Helen Mirra ma<strong>de</strong> a print on <strong>the</strong> way. She would cover a stone she<br />
found on <strong>the</strong> ground with green ink and apply it to a length of raw linen which she kept in<br />
her back-pack, fol<strong>de</strong>d like a map. This direct 'positive' print method recalls <strong>the</strong> Japanese<br />
pictorial technique known as gyotaku, which consists of covering a freshly caught fish<br />
with ink in or<strong>de</strong>r to make a realistic rubbing of it. Mirra's marks are "nei<strong>the</strong>r photographic<br />
nor <strong>de</strong>scriptive", making it impossible to pin <strong>the</strong>m down geographically. They are pure<br />
materiality, translating <strong>the</strong> reciprocal imprint left by <strong>the</strong> artist on <strong>the</strong> landscape and by <strong>the</strong><br />
landscape on <strong>the</strong> artist.<br />
H. M. tr. J.H.<br />
Born in 1970 in New York (United States), lives and works in Cambridge<br />
(United States).