In the Ivry-Port district stands a strange empty plinth…

TRIENNALE ART PUBLIC #3
Exhibition of studies and preliminary research
Exhibition from September 24, 2023 to February 17, 2024, Galerie Fernand Léger, 93 avenue Georges Gosnat, 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine, M° Mairie d’Ivry
In very good company and surrounded by other exciting research work and projects, I am showing Tribute to Work. Starting point is the empty plinth on the Place de l’Insurrection d’Août 1944, in the Ivry-Port district. The research was carried out with the valuable help of the Municipal Archives of Ivry-sur-Seine and the team of the Fernand Léger Gallery. With the kind participation of a turtle, a Minoan visitor of the Benaki Museum, Athens, Miss Lara Croft and other guests of honour.
This Public Art Triennial aims to promote research and preliminary studies of works (in the form of drawings, models, volumes, photographs, etc.) in relation to the territory.
This exhibition presents the creative process of commissioning artwork in urban space. It brings together the projects of 10 artists selected following a call for applications as well as a choice of studies from the national commission for temporary and reactivable works for public space, of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP).
Artists: Pierre-Olivier ARNAUD, Michel BLAZY, Corentin CANESSON, OPJ CYGANEK & Julie POULAIN, Isabelle DAËRON, Katrin GATTINGER, Jakob GAUTEL, Charlie HAMISH JEFFERY, Louise HERVÉ & Clovis MAILLET, Chourouk HRIECH, Sévérine HUBARD, Laurent LACOTTE, Anna PRINCIPAUD, Thilleli RAHMOUN, Delphine RENAULT, Stéphane VIGNY, Filipe VILAS-BOAS and Virginie YASSEF.

In the Ivry-Port district at the Place de l’Insurrection d’Août 1944, there is an empty plinth with the inscription TRIBUTE TO WORK.
It was erected in 1911 to support the sculpture of a steelworker, a work by Charles Théodore Perron. The bronze was smelted in 1942 to produce ammunition.
The plaster original still exists and is on display at the Petit Palais museum in Paris.
This empty base with its inscription raises multiple questions.
I would like to ask these questions to the inhabitants of Ivry, women, men and children.
Through exchanges, actions and photo sessions, playing on different scales, I want to invite them to interpret this plinth and give it meaning, to question the notion of work today.

Research

Work in progress

Proposals for the plinth

Opening, November 23, 2023

Exhibition views
With all these disparate and disturbing figurines, the theater model that you composed against the backdrop of an apocalypse seems to me to reflect the upheavals of the present time as much as the vanity of the “sanctification” of work.
Vincent Victor Jouffe, September 2023

Workshop Art in Context, about the approach of participatory art works, with teachers of the Académie de Créteil, coached together with Francesca Maltagliati, November 17, 2023, coordinator Sylvain Bory, Conseiller arts visuels-photographie, architecture, design.
Play as a strategy of empowerment and means of reversing the balance of power. The plinth of the overwhelming monument, a sign of power, becomes on a reduced scale a support for subversive play; a sort of “games console”.

Study day and 2^nd stage of the research grant.
On Saturday January 27, 2024, took place the study day Public Art Meeting : round tables, lecture, exhibition visit, with the participating artists, Tania Ruiz of Paris 8 University, the philosopher Christian Ruby…
Very happy to have been chosen with Isabelle Daëron as ex aequo winners of the 2^nd stage of the TAP#3 research grant, permitting us to continue our research work and projects! Most cordial thanks to the jury, to the Galerie Fernand Léger and to the City of Ivry-sur-Seine!

Landing
Ivry, the 1^st of May 2024
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”
→  The 1^st of May 2024, Galerie Fernand Léger
I am wearing the historic kepi of a security agent from the USINOR steel factories.
→  The USINOR kepi, capeophile.fr

Photos by JG and by Ianna Andréadis, Bernard Bousquet, Galerie Fernand Léger, Quentin Gassiat, Jason Karaïndros, Alexandra Sá, Filipe Vilas-Boas…