FRENCH SEASON 2024
As the world warms up for the Paris Olympics 2024, we are delighted to present a season of new works by contemporary French artists as part of a month-long programme across June to July including a spotlight on collaborative projects between artists in the Channel Islands and France.
Fête de la Musique
Saturday 22 June 2024, various locations around St Helier
We were pleased to partner with Jersey Opera House, Alliance Française and Maison de la Normandie et de la Manche for Jersey’s own take on the annual Fête de la Musique, an informal music take-over celebrated across France with buskers, amateurs and professional musicians playing along the streets of St Helier. This event was also brought to you by the Creative Island Partnership. The Fête de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, is celebrated annually in June on the day of the Summer Solstice. In France, it is a cultural tradition for musicians, amateur and professional alike, to perform in public spaces for all to hear. This year in St Helier both local and French Normandy acts performed in the streets.
The full programme can be found here.
What Shadow? (Ce Qui Dit la Bouche d’Ombre)
Thursday 11 July - Sunday 28 July 2024, Tuesday to Sunday, 10.30am to 6pm at ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House
An exhibition which presents the work of contemporary French, Jersey and Guernsey based artists, working individually and through collaborative dialogue, creating works across different media including photography, video, sound installation and ceramics. Each work explores with a delicately perceived sensitivity and feeling, layerings of form, place and human figure, unearthing a profound relationship to the landscapes, inheritances and twilight presences of Jersey, Guernsey and Brittany.
Featuring works by artists Yasmin Atkinson (Guernsey), Veronique Besnard and Naomi West (France / Jersey), Nolwenn Brod (France), Estelle Chaigne (France) and Louise London (Jersey).
Produced in association with Guernsey Arts and Les Ateliers du Vent (Rennes) with the support of Government of Jersey.
What Shadow? (Ce Qui Dit la Bouche d’Ombre) Artist Talk
Friday 12 July 2024, 6:30pm at ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House
Book free tickets here.
Join us for an artist talk following the opening of the exhibition, What Shadow? (Ce Que Dit la Bouche d'Ombre). The contemporary French and Channel Islands based artists will walk through the exhibition space, discussing their processes of working individually and through collaborative dialogue, creating works across different media.
Générateur de Tensions & Ventilator
Thursday 18 July 2024, 7pm at ArtHouse Jersey HQ at Greve de Lecq Barracks
Tickets: £10 + booking fee via Eventbrite
This double-bill of performances by Paris-based sound artist and composer Camille Lacroix is inspired from research around a text by Marcel Duchamp, which explores the idea of recycling body movements through forms of sonic energy. Captivating, energetic, theatrical, part body-machine, part human gallery of ‘ready-mades’, Générateur de Tensions and Ventilator present a fascinating dialogue between body and live composition.
Jérôme Bel by Jérôme Bel
Friday 19 and Saturday 20 July 2024, 7.30pm at ArtHouse Jersey HQ at Greve de Lecq Barracks
Tickets: £18 + booking fee (limited pay what you can) via Eventbrite
We are delighted to present the English language premiere of “Jérôme Bel”, a new work by the seminal French choreographer Jérôme Bel, whose playful, visceral and conceptual dance works since the 1990s have shaped and had one of the most significant influences on contemporary dance in Europe over the past thirty years.
Jérôme Bel’s recent work has focused on “portraits” of dancers, working across classical ballet, modern dance and ancient dance forms. Here, following “Isadora Duncan” which was a “danced portrait of a choreographer”, and one of the founding figures of modern dance, Jérôme Bel lends himself to his own exercise and delivers his personal account of a life in dance. Sharing his doubts, commitments, failures as well as his infatuations with wit and insight, the piece, which Bel describes as “auto-bio-choreo-graphic” articulates fragments of a life, a career and an intellectual project to reveal their common structures.
This work, first performed in 2021, and presented for two nights in the intimate studio of Greve de Lecq Barracks is performed by and in collaboration with Terry O’Connor originally from Jersey, and co-founder of one of the world’s most celebrated experimental contemporary theatre groups, Forced Entertainment.
Please note that this event does not feature Jérôme Bel performing or in person.
Burn to Shine by Patricia Allio
Thursday 25 July 2024, 7pm at Jersey Museum
Tickets: £10 + booking fee via Eventbrite
Patricia Allio visited Jersey in 2023 to present her solo theatre performance "Self-Portrait to My Grandmother" which explored her relationship to her Breton speaking grandmother. This new film work is an extraordinary "docu-fiction" which makes a dream-like journey through history, queerness and Breton language and culture based from the mystical history of the village of Saint-Jean-du-Doigt in Finistère.
Yves crosses the centuries and returns to the small village of Saint-Jean-du Doigt. During his wanderings, he meets a shaman in touch with the spirits, a painter in search of the light, a storyteller who initiates him into the secrets of traditional Breton songs, and a mystic who tells him about the forgiveness of Saint John. Queen Anne of Brittany and her knight join him in his quest and reveal to him the mysteries of his origin.
Through these encounters, including that with the painter Ricardo Cavallo, drawing on dance, music and performance, the film brings to burning life a very human meditation through time, language, memory and ritual.
Followed by a post-screening discussion with Patrica Allio.