détour

Artists: Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Sigurdur Árni Sigurdsson, John Armleder, Isabelle Arthuis, Silvia Bächli, Cécile Bart, Katinka Bock, Etienne Bossut, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Chiara Camoni, John Duncan, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Raymond Hains, Mark Lewis, Vera Molnar, François Morellet, Charlotte Moth, Maria Nordman, Thomas Teurlai & Ugo Schiavi, Jacques Villeglé, Franz Erhard Walther, Jackie Winsor, Gil J. Wolman

Curated by Chris Clarke.             

In 1956, the French artists Gil J. Wolman and Guy Debord proposed a guide to détournement, re-purposing existing advertisements, images and objects as a means of subverting societal conventions. This practice, which included cutting up city maps to encourage unplanned excursions through the city of Paris, was a way to effect disorientation. As the writers stated: “not many people would remain unaffected by an exact reconstruction in one city of an entire neighbourhood of another.”

détour presents selected works from the collection of the Frac Bretagne in Rennes, France. In addition to Gil J. Wolman’s 1960s collages of torn, varnished photographs and scrawled texts, the exhibition includes Raymond Hains’ photographs of signs found in rural villages, Vera Molnar’s computer-generated renderings of the Saint-Victoire mountain range, Thomas Teurlai & Ugo Schiavi’s archive of recovered graffiti samples, and Isabelle Arthuis’ evocative black-and-white images of viewers witnessing a nocturnal eclipse. Jacques Villeglé’s densely-layered compositions of torn posters propose a mode of collective creation through the gestures of passers-by or bad weather, while Silvia Bächli’s ink and pastel drawings capture the sensations and experiences of her daily walks. John Duncan documents the vacant spaces and adandoned detritus around his home city of Belfast. Charlotte Moth’s film presents various street scenes, populated with stage sets, potted plants, wheeled platforms, and flood lights, set to a propulsive jazz soundtrack. In Chiara Camoni’s installation, found pieces of marble were retrieved from riverbeds by the artist, laid out to resemble an extensive archaeological site, while Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s video work uses online footage of Palestinian protesters to create digital avatars of the artists. Throughout the exhibition, contemporary artists employ tactics of détournement to imaginatively interrogate the world around them. Transposed to Rennes’ twin city of Cork and the Glucksman’s unique architectural setting, détour presents a similar reimagining and reconstruction of the Frac Bretagne collection.

The Frac (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain) Bretagne, founded in 1981 by the National Government and the Brittany Regional Council, is a leading art institution in the western region of France. Since 2012, it has been located in a building designed by French architect Odile Decq in Beauregard park in Rennes. The Glucksman is a partner with GSCAPS (Creative Approaches to Public Space), a new graduate school developed by Rennes 2 University, and we are proud to further deepen our links with the Brittany Region through this collaboration with FRAC Bretagne and continue the historic and contemporary connections that exist between our two regions.  

détour is supported by Erasmus+, the Arts Council of Ireland, University College Cork, and Frac Bretagne, Rennes, France.