There's quite a few connections behind me going to see Agathe de Bailliencourt at Graf Salon.
I'll get around to an entry eventually (still haven't yet), but I work at Osaka's most creative alternative workspace, OOO: Out of Office. This month, OOO is holding a creator in residence program called cOOOkbOOOk, and Agathe is the featuring artist. She's French, but now living in Berlin and travelling the world creating art and art installations.
I love her installations. Dynamic; explosive; intrusive; colourful; lines and scribbles, all kinds of raw feelings mixed together. Check out the installation pictures on her website. On Sunday the 8th of February, in join collaboration with Graf Salon, Agathe created an installation on the 1st floor of the Graf Building in Nakanoshima. Her lines ran all over the floor, up the walls and the glass windows at the front of the building, over the airconditioning, across the roof and around the beams.
Agathe said she has no picture in her head of the final artwork, that it just comes out. When giving a speech about her work, one of the guests asked what happens if she makes a mistake. "I never think of anything I do as a mistake. Anyway, if it's a mistake, you work with it and turn it into something good."
On display were pages from Agathe's notebook (above), containing her day to day experiences in visual format. As you can see, colour is very important in her work. She mentioned to me that the first thing she thinks of is colour; what best suits the space or canvas, or what 'colour' the place is. Berlin is bright pink—all of the electronic music, apparently.
During the day, there was an ongoing workshop where everyone was invited to bring something 'lost and found', and put some life back into it. Agathe encouraged participants to write their name on their items repeatedly, turning their names into the design. "Don't just write your name again and again, try to think about how it's written, and feel how you are using the space. Sometimes white space is also good", she instructed guests. The results were very good, and even if the results weren't good, the exercise was good. I participated, and doing so, I realised that I need to do stuff like this more often. Like, just drawing and scribbling different colours all over random objects. It was so liberating! And doing it in a group really forces questions on yourself, when you see how other people interact with their own works, you began to question your own reasons. How come everyone else is still going? Have I really finished? I felt like I rushed mine a bit (I did the green cup in the picture below).
I want to blog more about what Agathe is doing in the office, where I work. I'll see if I can ask her a few questions as well.
