Aurelien Froment - Professional Practise 3.5

Aurelien is a French Artist from Paris who has been living and working in Dublin for the last four years. He has always had an interest in theatre and film and made the decision to complete an course rather than theatre school as it has a broader course. He graduated in 2000 and has been working in the areas of photography, video, sculpture, photography and text based mediums since. During his presentation he spoke about site specific work, distributing leaflets to certain people outside the entrance to a movie theatre 5 minutes before a film began. He said it was the perfect time just before they left the outside world for a while to enter into a specific story or characters life. From this I learned that timing and place are extremely important to the viewing of art. In his case what he was handing out related to the place he was. At that time he also had a job in a cinema which influenced his practise as an artist.

Later he was commissioned to make a 5 five minute piece of work for an independant theatre which was shown for 2 years. He brainstormed what image or motif he could use between the commercials and trailers but before the fiction of the film, at the moment when the audience are chatting among themselves, something that would grab their attention. This was an important point for me, again raising the issue of what fits into the space, time, context and theme of where the work was to be shown. The piece is based on the image of a jellyfish and the voiceover attempts to exhaust this image. I thought the image was really vibrant and it captured my attention due to it’s majestic nature. Froment titled the piece Pulmo Marina and chose to leave out credits and names of producer. As for the space he made a decision to mimick the theatre landscape and project the clip onto film.

In 2002, he made Diary of 2030 which consisted of an edition of 500 diaries, a photo of future Acrosante, Arizona added into each diary. I found it interesting that he added the photo of an actual place into the diaries. While at that exact site on his trip to Arizona, there was a sudden storm and Froment made a short video approximately 24 flashes per second. This video was my favourite piece of work that he showed. Froment said that he didn’t even research the place on the internet before he went so it was all completely new to him. The images are stunning and it made me realised that sometimes a piece of art just happens. Sometimes when you don’t have any certain idea for work, the surroundings themselves make the work.

Froment spoke of his 2010 work, The Second Gift which is a wooden box containing different forms which can be constructed. This work was greately influenced by Friedrich Frobel, who educated at kindergardens in Germany. His theory was that we learn through play. When Froment made his own version he wanted it to be displayed in a gallery or museum in such a way that viewers were allowed to touch it and play with it. He learned that by putting instructions near it on the table, people could see the contents of the box and what they did. He invited people to attend workshops to allow interaction and educational aspects. This is something I will definitely keep in mind when I make work because viewers need some sort of instruction. This aspect of audience interaction with the work is something I’ve had trouble with before, because I don’t particularly like leaving instructions as I prefer to see how the viewer will touch the work without ‘permission’ but it usually ends up with my work not being viewed well or interacted with. It’s difficult for viewers to know what to do in that situation and it is my responsibility to present the work in a way that is accessible.

He started to look at film and projection from another angle. Projecting something into the future or projecting something from the past. This interested me because there are many different types and ways things can be projected and it’s an area that I would be interested in working in. Whether that be digital projections, projections of stories into art, projecting thinking in a series of movements or a mental state in a sensory way. Modèle d’exposition 2009 is another of his works which has an element of play, it consists of 96 square cards that are placed face down on a table with a grid system. 2 cards have to be flipped over by one player and they have to fabricate a story to relate the two cards. This artwork was my favourite because it allows the audience to have fun but also to be active. Much of Froment’s work is a response to the actual exhibition space or place of display. He prefers to edit work to the space rather than make work that just sits in a space that has no relation to it whatsoever.