Laure Provoust: Oui Move In You

Continuing the annual ACCA International series of solo exhibitions by influential artists on the international stage, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art is delighted to present Oui Move In You, a major solo exhibition by French artist Laure Prouvost. Encompassing new commissions and a selection of work created over the past decade, the exhibition surveys the imaginative, absorbing and frequently absurdist hallmarks of Prouvost’s diverse artistic practice.

Acknowledging the radical, experimental and pathfinding figures who came before her, Oui Move In You conceptually explores the roles and legacies of grandmother and grandfather, the maternal relations of mother and child, and contemporary social spaces in which humans commune with the natural world. 

Oui Move In You is composed as a celebration of liberation and imagination, the sensual and sensuous, being and belonging, care and connection. Leading audiences on a journey from the subterranean realm of the underground and the subconscious towards a final joyous act of skywards levitation, the exhibition opens with the formative work Wantee 2013, for which the artist was awarded the Turner Prize. From there we are led into the marvellous, speculative world of Gathering Ho Ma, The glaneuse 2023, set around a campfire, to contemplate hovering celestial glass objects created in honour of artistic and intellectual precursors.

The bodily and earthly realm, exploring sensuality, desire and the fecundity of nature, is the subject of works including Four for sea beauties 2022, Swallow 2013 and Into all that is here 2015. Finally, as we emerge from a suspended forest, into the expansive video and sculptural installation Every Sunday Grandma 2023, the exhibition culminates with a release into the sky and the heavenly plains of weight and weightlessness, lightness and gravity.

As an extension to the exhibition, ACCA has published a limited-edition artist’s book, H Oma Je, with contributions by Laure Prouvost alongside almost one-hundred fellow artists, friends and collaborators, paying homage to grandmothers, artistic matriarchs, inspirational elders, ancestors and forebears.

Curators: Max Delany and Annika Kristensen