The festival revolves around an international competition open to young designers, which combines exhibitions and discussions. Through this innovative platform, the villa Noailles aims to further its support for young design, whilst at the same time gathering together designers, members of the industry, journalists, and the general public. There are 2 segments to the festival : design in Hyères and interior design in Toulon.
18.30 ― Official opening of the 3rd Festival International of interior design, Design Parade Toulon, in attendance of Hubert Falco, senator-mayor of Toulon followed by a cocktail, Ancien évêché, 69 cours Lafayette, Toulon
19.00 – 21.00 ― Opening of the exhibitions in Toulon QL’École Supérieure d’Art et de Design Toulon Provence Méditerranée au Port des créateurs, Galerie Stardust Q QDaragh Soden - Portraits de Ville – commande photographique sur Toulon, rue des Arts Q QJulien Oppenheim, Galerie des musées, rue des Arts Q QMathieu Cossé Q QVictor Levai Q QMathilde Vallantin Dulac Q QVincent de Hoÿm Q QJade Fourès-Varnier Q QPierre Banchereau – Debeaulieu x Akatre Q Q5 rooms / chambres de résidence Le Moulin des Ribes par 5 designers Q QLéa Bardin Q QLesage intérieurs x E & R Bouroullec Q QAlexandre-Benjamin Navet, lauréat 2017 Q QPierre Marie Q QPierre Yovanovitch, invité d’honneur Q
22.00 ― Screening of the movie Metropolis, in partnership with Le Liberté, scène nationale de Toulon QPlace de l’Équerre, Toulon
Design Parade Hyères
13th international festival of design
From June 29 to July 1st, 2018
Exhibitions open until September 30
villa Noailles
Montée Noailles
Opening hours during the festival
Friday June 29, 19.30: Official opening of festival and exhibitions
Saturday June 30: 10.00 – 18.00
Sunday July 1st: 10.00 – 18.00
Please note the villa Noailles is closed on July 2nd and 3rd.
Opening hours after the festival
From July 4 to September 30, the villa Noailles is open everyday from 2pm to 7pm. Friday late night opening from 3pm to 9pm.
Free admission.
Coming to the villa Noailles
!!! Warning, do not use GPS instructions !!!
Please, follow the recommended itineraries.
1. From Toulon:
rond-point Henri Petit
avenue Alexis Godillot
avenue Riondet
avenue Victor Basch
Chemin de la porte Saint Jean
Parking du Château
2. From Le Lavandou:
avenue Ambroise Thomas
avenue Jean Jaurès
avenue Nocart
rue Lamartine
boulevard d'Orient
rue de Verdun
rue de l'ascension
boulevard Matignon
avenue Paul Long
Montée Noailles
Parking du château
Design Parade Toulon
3rd international festival of interior design
From June 28 to July 1st 2018
Exhibitions open until September 30
Ancien Évêché
69 cours Lafayette
Opening hours during the festival
Thursday June 28, 18.30 : Official opening of festival and exhibitions
Friday June 29 : 14.00 – 18.00
Saturday June 30 : 11.00 – 18.00
Sunday July 1st : 11.00 – 17.00
Opening hours after the festival
Open everyday from 11am to 5pm
Sunday from 11am to 1pm
Closed on Monday and bank holidays
Free admission
GaM
la Galerie des Musées
22 - 24 rue Pierre Semard
Open everyday from 12pm to 18pm
Closed on Sunday and Monday
Free admission
La Rue des Arts
rue Pierre Semard
galerie de L’ÉSAD TOULON PROVENCE MÉDITERRANÉE
Place Gambetta
Le Stardust
20 rue Chevalier Paul
Vintage design market
Toulon
place du globe
Thursday June 28 Midday to Midnight
Friday June 29 10.00am - 4.00pm
Hyères
villa Noailles
Saturday June 30: 10.00am - 6.00pm
Sunday June 1st: 10.00am - 6.00pm
In order to leave the exterior world and encourage meditation, this duo plunges us into a universe with enigmatic depths. The room is crossed by a line of diagonal arches which demarcate the two areas: facing the entrance, the functional space has white enamel tiles which outline a grid from the floor to the ceiling; on the other side, the arches and the dark blue trompe-l’œil paintings offer a horizon to be contemplated. The integrity of the white grid pattern is penetrated by black shadows which are falsely projected by the rounded openings. This game of fictional perspectives is reinforced by a distressed mirror which extends them to infinity, towards an elusive dimension. A few items of furniture, placed in the lit area, provide the comfort necessary for relaxation and an immersive perspective upon this interior architecture: an understated day bed made from lava stone and designed by Charlotte Juillard, a bedside table, a lamp. The ensemble is completed by a bookshelf consisting of terracotta modules. These reference points anchor the visitor in a reality which they master when the rest of the elements lead them beyond tangible limits.
First collective creation by these twins, the project is created from their holiday memories in the Mediterranean. The smell of the fig trees, the taste of tomatoes, the sound of the cicadas, the warmth upon the skin… The furnishings of the kitchen and the living room rekindle the memories of their past sensations and awaken the senses. All of the walls are daubed in a light limewash which covers surfaces and erases angles, the furniture providing coloured forms. The room is divided by a partition pierced by an arch which opens up a perspective upon a mosaic tub, whose colour, along with the noise of the water, provide a freshness. This interior terrace recreates a living space without limits, lit by the rays of a tempered light which the cane ceiling lets pass. In the small kitchen area, the mismatched items are piled up in an open cupboard with a rounded shape. One can move effortlessly from the worktop to the soft terracotta table in order to share a meal in the midst of a charming décor of small discovered objects, which hang from the walls and are enamelled, from where generous bouquets of buds arise which will soon open and create wild compositions. Passing from one space to the other, one profits from the day as it passes.
Nestled in the hollow of the corniche, this library is a secret and privileged location, which opens out onto the horizon. Its layout borrows the languorous and welcoming curves of the promenade which overlooks the sea, with an architectural language that is unique to this location, meandering and observing: the stairs, the platforms, the street lamps, the curved bench which seems infinite. This interior design plays with contrasts observed outside, by confronting the brutality of the rock and the raw light which shatters upon the rugged landscape, against the softness and refinement of the fabric whose colours recalls the Mediterranean, a white and sky blue. The ensemble is propitious for reflection through the availability of the books, inviting reverie by allowing one to languish upon the generous furniture, suggesting escape through its window upon the sea whilst also offering a surface dedicated for exhibitions as well as a play space for children. Everything has been thought out so that one’s body may find the most comfortable position at every moment, according to one’s desires, in particular thanks to the cushion assembly system which makes up the couch. Without constraints, this room elegantly defines zones adapted for each function.
This evocative title invites us to dream. With generosity, Lucas Djaou shares the objects which he has harvested over the course of his travels, some exchanged, some found, they are each couriers of emotions and the memories of encounters. This space is organised like a journey between two times. The bright orange-coloured entry to the room is designed, like a sanctuary for exhibiting heterogeneous artefacts: here a striped mask sculpted in a coconut by a Javanese artist, there a ritual talisman discovered in Papua New Guinea, next to which is a chair cut from the trunk of a tree by a Parisian cabinetmaker, further on are Balinese pottery supernatural beings; it feels like one is flicking through a life sized stamp album. Taking the time, therefore, to examine all of the details whilst sitting comfortably on orange, green, red or gold cushions. The second space, darker, invites us to rest and meditate. It is entirely covered in terracotta tiles from Salernes with a matte black enamel which contrasts with the vigorous vibrancy of the exotic leaves of a monstera. Beneath this plant-covered sky is placed a big anthracite mattress where one might lie replete, nourished by the beauties of the world.
The torrid heat of the south is pushed to its peak through an acknowledged mise-en-scène by this duo who wish to provoke an intense sensorial experience. This surprising décor for a dining room is voluntarily signified through the screens positioned in front of the walls like stage screens. The top and the bottom oppose and meet one another, playing with the contrast between the crushing atmosphere of the black carbon, which emanates from the ceiling, and the dazzling whiteness of the floor. The wooden slats seem to be consumed from the roof, materialising a vertical and irregular gradation which evolves towards a reddish brown. They touch the sparkling floorboards entirely covered with white paint upon which transparent stools are placed, as well as milky vases holding compositions of dried flowers. The floor and the objects almost merge, giving the impression of stalagmites arising from the surface. In the middle of the room, the table with its flamboyant red top is the only element with a bold colour which offers its amber reflections to the light which penetrates through the window. It is designed like a hearth, a fireplace which attracts and gathers together. It is the principle scene where a Baroque still life of tableware and dried fish can be contemplated.
Earth is the dominant material in this living room which subtly illustrates its multiple variation. This designer observes how its immediate availability, its chromatic and constituent richness have made it the most employed material as well as the vector of cultures and crafts which have been transferred over millennia from one side of the Mediterranean to the other. This room is articulated around three brown round seats created according to the rammed earth method, which consists of compacting the earth in order to solidify it. In the middle is a coffee table made from granite and bronze cast in a mould created in clay whose irregular imprint can still be seen in the solid metal. Bricks made from baked clay support the decorative objects which follow the same logic of transformation of the natural element; a lamp made from blown glass (vitrified silica) and ceramic vases which reveal a delicate palette containing more or less ferrous oxide, passing from red to white, and where some are enhanced by a black enamel on the inside. The flooring, the walls and the ceiling are equally rendered with a natural white fine grained earth. To round of the ensemble, a décor of Chamotte tiles with burnt tones is applied onto one of the walls from the floor, offering an homage to the renowned craftsmanship of the Provençal village of Salernes.
In order to conceive this dining room, Clémence Frot called upon the joyous memories of her childhood holidays in her family house next to the Mediterranean. Contrary to her everyday life, these moments of freedom, bathed in the southern sunshine, inspired her to create a boundless living room, where the furniture is suggested by large shapes in papier-mâché. A day bed, table, or buffet? It is down to the user to define their purpose. Flip-flops and tableware rub shoulders in a merry mess. Nobody will tell us off, it’s the lunch break before the beach, the pleasure of being together, no time to tidy up before going back out to play. The clear glass table almost disappears, in order to not encourage behaviour that is too courteous; the chairs which surround it look like swimming pool ladders, emerging from the floor, around a pool of sand. They are made from yellow lacquered curved tubes of metal. Their bright colour contrasts with the rest of the elements which are entirely olive green, from the floor to the ceiling and all of the surfaces. Placed in front of the window, is a sliding rail which allows for a sheet of distorted plexiglass to be slid, flooding the room with aquatic reflections. A pause, therefore, between reality and the imagination.
This duo offers an intimate approach to the home by designing an evolving reading room created through traditional techniques and materials from the shores of the Mediterranean. Bathed in a soft light filtered by large white net curtains, the room seems to open out beyond its limits thanks to two half columns in a pale pink zellige which reflects in a mirrored partition. The effect of perspective is accentuated by the broad yellow and white stripes on the ceiling which remind us of an awning, an interior terrace within which luscious plants provide a coolness. Upon the floor, covered with large terracotta tiles, are placed elements of furniture with clean lines; a wooden chair and a crude stone lamp sculpted by an artist from the South of France. The masterpiece in this living room is the evolving bookshelf which the owner is invited to hollow out in a long wall. They must excavate the alcoves in order to place the books and objects they have collected over the years, thus modelling with their own hands the setting for their memories.
This room takes its name from an advanced stage of meditation which consists of uniting a group of people within an isolated environment. Over ten days, the participants observe a silence and the rules of a modest life in order to encourage an attitude of contemplative reflection. The room’s layout liberates itself somewhat from these principles so as to grant more comfort and recreation. Large vertical panels, bound with linen, are positioned in an arc in front of the walls, outlining a path of infinite meandering. All of the surfaces from the floor to the ceiling are coloured with acrylic and boosted with touches of oil paint in ochre, orange, sand and skin tones, warm and enveloping. A hammock in woven brown leather is suspended in different positions thanks to the only synthetic elements in the room; bright orange climbing ropes and metallic carabiners. The basic furniture is modelled upon a mixture of wood chips, silica, and raw clay. The ensemble is lit by a large linen disc two metres wide
which is attached to the window, thus producing the effect of a hypnotic moon, unfettered from the cycles and references of everyday life.
Sailing boats, birds, amphorae, plastic sandals, algae, parasols, so many coloured images of summer in the Mediterranean, which inhabit all of this location for relaxation. An invitation to be lazy, the room is furnished with a wooden screen, two chaises longues and a magazine rack, each designed by this duo who have opted for a curved steel structure, in a brick lacquer, and dressed in a patchwork fabric. The figures previously mentioned are cut into patches of pure colours, in a similar fashion to Matisse’s collages, and then randomly stitched together in order to create a true holiday patchwork. To this are added large bands of green, ochre and turquoise which equally evoke the natural tonalities of this meridional region as well as the awnings of its cafes. This motif is then borrowed on the wallpaper, which dominates one of the walls. The other walls are covered in a lime whitewash to grant the space light. Finally, a coffee table in hammered aluminium, painted in a dark green, recalls the craftsmanship to be found in the flea markets. Other details brighten and surprise joyfully, like a suspended mobile which moves according to the breeze, or the coat hangers and the decorative enamelled pottery lemons.
The apartment was witness to a drama whose principle character was Mlle Oops. Despite the location’s measured elegance and cosy comforts, Mlle Oops preferred to leave. As for the decor, it, decided to stay.
Prologue
Decor: the dining room
Arm muscles almost cramping, the out-of-breath machinists let slip: “The curtain refuses to come up!” Yet it has often been willing in the past. Its blood-red colour — unlike the crimson red of the first few nights — speaks volumes about its age. The bishop who, he alone, might have made it give in to reason, has left the room, without a care for replacing his chair nor waiting for his guest, the irresistible Mlle Oops, who he has, out of a taste for the ceremonial and a desire to not talk, placed at the other end of
the table.
Weary of waiting, Mlle Oops finally gets up. Anticipating the hesitations which will undoubtedly bother her, the curtain which encircles the room guides Mlle Oops towards the kitchen.
Scene 1
Decor: the kitchen
The hues of yellow which assault Mlle Oops from all over awaken something in her. It’s not a Van Gogh field before harvest. Nor crates of lemons and grapefruit. It nags at her like a bad memory, that of a betrayal. And now she has the irresistible desire to betray. But she has nobody to betray. Quite simply because she has no one to love. So, therefore, she must first love. There, it is said. There is no longer anything keeping her in the kitchen so she rushes to leave it.
Excerpt from the text published in the Design Parade catalogue.
One must probably be a little daring, naive, poetic, or all three; cultivating an idea of luxury as that of a universe ruled by norms which only belong to him, far from the constraints of every day life, the measured, the period’s antics. On the contrary, it is close to desire. One must once again have a taste for the paradoxical, for an opposite stance, for the infinitely different. One must quite simply be called Pierre Marie in order to allow oneself to imagine a winter garden, at the height of summer, on the ground floor of the former archbishopric of Toulon. A fake summer, as sung by Christophe (in his beautiful song “Chiqué, Chiqué”), a winter in July.
“This is a room I have always wanted to create,” he explains.
“It materialises a transitory state. One is at the same time at home, but not entirely. It is a decompression chamber, a means of allowing the exterior to come inside. I conceived it as a space where one can come to keep cool, lying next to the ground, reading a book in the middle of the plants, or receiving friends to drink some tea.”
The principal inspiration came from a trip to Sri Lanka last winter and the memories of this journey. What remains of this elsewhere after one has returned? What does one retain? Materials, sensations, colours which blend with our own imaginary world, intertwining with it.
The orchids and the lotus flowers (Sri Lanka’s national emblem) of the Kandy botanical garden, thus become motifs which are projected and imprinted into the space. The almost fluorescent green, very pale, very diluted which covers many Sri Lankan buildings covers all of the walls in this room, grants us the sensation of entering into a luminous dome.
In order to grant substance to this fantasised garden, bearer of an assumed exoticism, Pierre Marie worked with artisans with whom he has a close relationship, all of whom possess exceptional skills which, when placed at his disposal, reaffirm their contemporaneity: stained glass, a rug from Aubusson, cloisonné enamels on ceramic from Longwy… Like his other creations, this interior architecture project preserves an approach which is naive, narrative, and which boasts about returning design and decoration to the heart of the project. Pierre Marie started with what already existed: the Salernes tiled floor of the archbishopric, the imprint of the former chimney which has become a fountain, and which now overlooks an enamel tiled pool. “Where once there was fire, I wanted to bring water”, he explains. The enormous ogive of the French window is now decorated with a beribboned pattern and stained glass, which allows the light to come in. This is reflected and resonates in the lush patterns of the rugs, creating a room that is full of connections, mischief, and traps for the gaze. Seized by this pattern, its repetitions, permeated with a fervour that is as new as it is unexpected, one can now only dream of languor, coolness, a lethargic hedonism, whispered in the ears of those near, contemplatives and friends.
This encounter between the embroiderer Lesage Intérieurs and the designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec gave birth to the project Taille douce, the result of a dialogue between a well thought out design and a mastery of exceptional embroidery that is focused on the future.
Shared view
Embroidery is a language, how to speak it?
Our world is full of pixels that are always on demand of a new picture to phrase, to the point we forgot that not so long ago a picture was difficult to physically produce. Embroidery comes from that time, when the effort to produce was just the right balance to the symbolic that the picture would transport. It is genuinely true that craftsmanship is engraving more than solely colour or detail. Instead it is a language of its own, and the difficulty is to properly phrase the words, or the symbolic would be lost. In a certain way you can understand it as the origin of pixels, each embroidery point is here to make a part of the picture, while also conveying its own weight and magic. We have been coding a digital sequence to degrade the picture. Something that step by step would interpret the millions of bits into another language, where you lose information in order to make the symbolic appear. The information that remains is the essence of the picture so that the magic of a needle and a yarn can take full part in the phrase. Embroidery is an amazing language, full of diverse expression and manner, and to learn is the story of a lifetime, so somehow we made a translator to express the symbolic while allowing these skilled hands to phrase the words.
Erwan & Ronan Bouroullec
Undressing the ornament : The veil
When the gaze of Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec fixes upon no longer the ornamental but the essence of embroidery, what is expressed is the emotion of a language of stitches. The precision, the minutiae, the entanglement of each stitch tied one to the next following the cross-hatched rhythms of taille-douce compositions.
Language is therefore suggested like an image, even soughed. It narrates, in a contemporary language the powerful bond created between the handiwork of the embroiderer and the modern and poetical graphics of technology guided by the emotion of the creator.
The drawing, like a fresco, unfolds upon the panel “the veil”. It scatters across the fabric. It is a revival of the craft’s fundamentals.
Jean-François Lesage is heir to three generations of embroiderers — established in 1880 — and his father, François Lesage, is the legendary embroiderer of Haute Couture. From his Paris office, Lesage Intérieurs, he creates and develops furnishings embroidery projects for clients all over the world: decorators, interior designers, museums, art galleries, private collectors, upholsterers. His manufactory situated in India in Madras-Chennai, is a certified SA 8000 workshop — which guarantees the social ethic of the work environment. There, under the supervision of Jean-François Lesage, two hundred embroiderers create these highly refined embroideries on commission. In 2014, Lesage Intérieurs joined Maison Lesage, one of Chanel’s maison d’art.
This is an invitation to explore the pleasures of a hidden passion. A fictional collector’s obsession for all sorts of vases which have been rummaged, lent, or created for the occasion. In the manner of a cabinet of curiosities, he has staged a series of niches and shelves within this interior space. These objects dialogue with the chimney decorations and other aesthetic fantasies such as sketches, drawings, and paintings. Together they echo the landscapes of Toulon, and are the collector’s invitation to an interior and exterior voyage. The expressive tones of this fantasised living room evoke the warmth of the South of France and the ceramic arts for which the region is famous.
Alexandre Benjamin Navet was awarded of the Grand Prix Design Parade Toulon Van Cleef & Arpels in 2017, that he won in duo with Paul Brissonet. He is graduated from l'ENSCI - les atelier, he lives and works in Paris.
The first time I came to Fabrègues, I was dumbfounded, it was as if each tree, each stone, each structure lunged into me.
Certain places have a depth which one might call their soul, or spirit, or something else. Within these locations, all presences find themselves confronted with another, more important presence, which precedes us, surrounds us and overlooks us.
This particular dimension is unexplained, it is imposed and felt, within our innermost selves, probably in relationship with our childhood memories. Mine was at the foot of the mont Sainte-Victoire nearby, the same colour of ground, the same smells, almost the same light.
That day, Pierre — who I had met a few days before — and Mathieu welcomed me, like one welcomes a friend. The elegance of this reception matched the majesty of the location, which Pierre and Mathieu personified as if they had always lived there. They had just finished a very long restoration, which was at the same time necessary, precise, and refined, exalting the château’s round and raw, soft and austere architecture.
Pierre had the intuition to invite Claire to create a work for the chapel, foreseeing that her art, “turned towards the inside” in her own words, and the location, a small chapel huddled against the powerful walls of the château, at the heart of the important exterior at Fabrègues, had something to say. Pierre therefore asked me to film and photograph Claire’s work, which lasted a month.
It was springtime but it was still cold in the north of the Haut-Var at that time. Four times I took the road to Fabrègues whilst Claire was there. Four times I took the roads of a cold Provence, telling myself how nature here is wild and vast, hardly tamed, barely inhabited, it was quite simply beautiful.
Claire was working in the chapel, where she had asked for the walls to be painted in a subdued pink. I watched and listened. Claire was at the same time swift and silent, with nature surrounding her, beneath different lights and skies. On entering and leaving the chapel, I went from an intimacy to the wide open. I observed at the same time the work in the process of being born, in its cocoon, and the pine trees, the deciduous oaks and the wild grasses which sheltered it whilst it bloomed. Little by little, outlines appeared on the walls, growing, faces, eyes, some sad. Children were born out of Claire’s artistry, and her vision which, sometimes, seemed to lunge inwards.
Outside, the sky burned at sunrise, the pines swayed slowly, their long blue almost black trunks allowing for bits of the sky to be seen, a different blue, that of the night waning.
Daragh Soden plunges us into a world of lights. From the Mont Faron to the Cap Brun passing through the Méjean bay, this Irish photographer recounts the chronicles of an ordinary life. Those of a multicultural town where the inhabitants take possession of it. During the three trips he spent there, he met young immigrants, soldiers, long term inhabitants of Toulon and sailors in transit. Life emanates from every part of these photos, out of joy, seriousness, and weariness.
The harbour, this strange beauty of a maritime city, this militarised space, forbidden to the public, rhythms this port city. Daragh penetrates into the high security area in order to shoot another part of Toulon life, that which we imagine to be austere, that of the military. And yet, the sun surrounds each crew with its golden glow.
A commanding officer strikes a pose, a quartermaster smiles, and a sailor stands to attention. The bridge takes on a golden hue highlighting different frameworks which are invisible when the sun is at its zenith. A welcoming and soft light which enhance the subjects, inscribing them in eternity
At the exit to the port, is a feeling of wide opens spaces, where an impression of mobility and transition are immediate.
The sailors navigate towards new missions, the harbour is but a stopover. Bikers who criss-cross the winding roads of the Var, stop for a swim. Tourists and their luxury saloon cars will leave at the end of the summer.
Toulon remains, Toulon changes. Toulon is reborn at each golden hour.
Daragh Soden’s photographs are part of a publication in the collection “Portraits de villes”, éditions Be-Pôles. Daragh Soden is based in London. He has been awarded of the Grand Prix of the Photography jury in Hyères in 2017.
For Design Parade, four artists, or collectives, have taken over the bishopric of Toulon in an original fashion. Matthieu Cossé has created a black and white fresco beneath the vaulted porch, entrance to the building. Jade Fourès-Varnier and Vincent de Hoÿm have designed the furniture for the courtyard, beneath the branches of the plane tree. Victor Levai and Mathilde Vallantin Dulac have taken over the shop with a cabinet of curiosities, between ghosts and etchings, where We Do Not Work Alone presents its knotted woollen rugs, created within the Kurashiki Dyeing Spinning and Weaving Studio in Japan. Together, they have created an Aeropagus, faces of a young art, uninhibited and versatile. If nothing formal unites them, beyond a moving archipelago of locations and common figures, a family resemblance seems to have crystalised, which suggested the idea of uniting them. Without playing a new wave air, their energy beats to the rhythm of the same pulse, and washes against the beaches of a singular wake. Matthieu Cossé’s post-Dufy lightness gives the false impression of a solar untanglement, a pointillist summer, when a deaf melancholy is a sign of a reflection upon reduced attention in a Snapchat era. For Cossé, surpassing formalism is far from being a naive belief in a potential innocence, but rather this strange dialectic between harmony and a wave of melancholy. Victor Levai and Mathilde Vallantin Dulac, award winners at Design Parade Toulon in 2017, also played upon the tension between simplicity and brutality, precision in and surrounding forms that are untameable or abandoned, creating an aura that is at the same time sunny and quasi gothic, which can be certainly rediscovered in an extreme oriental version. More sarcastic in We Do Not Work Alone, this childlike mindset revisits and manipulates comfortable uses. As do Jade Fourès-Varnier and Vincent de Hoÿm, in a more referenced work, which innocently subvert the memories of pinacothecas: amphorae and Last Suppers, flowers and banquet tablets by Cézanne are revived and redistributed in compositions between pleasure and a grimace.
Together, their works seem to form a Mediterranean kaleidoscope — here Japanese-inspired — hedonistic, sometimes ironic, certainly modern in their dialogue with the specular concerns of visits and circulation, deprived of any naivety despite a common and discrete pantheon of forms and movements. They bear witness to a greed for creation and invention which also passes through the de-compartmentalisation of practices which are indifferent to both support and techniques. The sketch is no longer the formality behind the design, nor its prehistory, but the final moment of a reflexive assimilation. The reference is metamorphosed, embodied, and erased in the retinas as much as the objects and the walls. The glare of the world is enclosed, struck by muffled spleens; their means of inhabiting a space, through memories, poetic allusions and echoing rhymes, all the while preserving the strangeness which is secreted in a pop and summery theatre.
Over the past few years you have become known for your extraordinary bouquets, your art of accommodating wild plants and rendering old-fashioned flowers their poetry. You sometimes incorporate everyday objects into your compositions. However, we don’t know your sources of inspiration.
— I don’t define myself as a traditional florist who only works with plants. In fact, it is important for me that the composition matches as best as possible the location, a collection, a theme. That is why I have an approach where the decorative floral aspect sometimes requires the addition of further items, various materials. I like to misappropriate ordinary objects and to transform them, but also to reveal them in an out of sync fashion. It might be ropes, or fabrics, diy or gardening materials, or even gathering from nature or bargain hunting in flea markets. One of my favourite Parisian shops is the basement at bhv!
The work carried out on each flower is done instantly and the works your create are ephemeral. You employ natural and local shapes. How do you manipulate these constraints?
— I create my bouquets like a painter undertakes a canvas. I already have in mind my selection of flowers, my range of colours, but everything happens bit by bit as the bouquet takes shape. It frequently happens, for that matter, that one element results in a change in the composition. I consider that the constraints of nature, the season, and the unique, as a strength and a richness which renders the creation one-of-a-kind. One of the first reasons why I chose this career, is because of its ephemeral nature. That’s why I rarely photograph my work.
For Design Parade, you are presenting an installation in collaboration with studio Akatre. How did this project with these graphic designers come about?
— Studio Akatre already takes the photographs for our web site. In the beginning, the act of fixing these bouquets was hard, but today it’s the result of a genuine process and reflection with this team. For this installation, the collaboration happened very spontaneously. We shared a desire to construct our shared work in the form of a video in front of a photographic work by Martin Parr. It’s a true duet. I share my universe with them, my desires, my inspirations and they are motivated by this in order to create and implement this project.
The idea of 5Rooms arose in January 2017, after a visit to villa Noailles. This project is part of an initiative to create artists’ residencies run by a non-profit association in Monaco.
The opportunity to collaborate with the arts centre led us to rethink the design of the five bedroom and bathroom units under restoration at the Provençal farmhouse of Moulin des Ribes. We organised a competition for the interior decoration and furnishing of the residences amongst past winners of the Design Parade festival, which allowed us to select the first four design studios. The renewal project for the fifth residence was offered as a prize to the winner of the interior design category at the 2017 edition of Design Parade.
Every detail — from the bed to the alarm clock, the lanterns, sheets, glassware, and carafes — was appointed in such a way to express the individual spirit of each room, in harmony with the local and traditional handicrafts of the region.
It was a joy to work directly with the designers and experience the dynamic and cordial collaboration between all participants. We organised encounters with artisans and tradesmen: bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, woodworkers, painters, and many others.
Now, the 5Rooms residences are ready to reveal their imaginative worlds. Each space tells a story and testifies to an interpersonal adventure that will give life to more adventures over time. Joachim Jirou-Najou, Paul Brissonnet + Alexandre Benjamin Navet, Superpoly, Studio Quetzal, Zanellato/Bortotto are the five design studios for the five rooms, which are future creative cocoons, refuges for free thinking. The 5Rooms initiative represents the prologue of a string of events that will see our Monegasque association acting locally and internationally to support designers, artists, artisans, and researchers through residencies, workshops, and the sponsorship of their production.
Silvia Fiorucci
Silvia and I share a passion for art and the discovery of new talents, both being aware of the implications and needs of young artists. This project is very generous to both future beneficiaries and to designers because it offers a concrete working space, supported by Silvia, the arts centre and the artisans of South-East France whose specific know-how is fully appreciated here. The materials, the colours and the craftsmanship are evidence of the art of living on the Côte d’Azur, this land which connects us and which has witnessed the revelation of great artists over the decades.
