Works and lives in London – French
“Ninas” (military school – Ecuador 2002)
digital print – various sizes
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This piece of work is related to education systems and society.
It has been shown in a dyptic with another
photo related to western culture. The photo was one of two boys
fascinated by a plastic gun. One was wearing a mask of the super
hero spiderman while the other was explaining him the use of the
gun. In the background, on the shelves of a bookcase, we could see
a photo of an christian icon looking at them...
Both photos represented youth people but
in two differents cultures and influences. They both had icons and
relationship with symbolics weapons.
This was shown last year, at the Conway Hall in London in a show
for protesting against war.
The photo of the “ninas” shown
a reality where the best futur for the children is the military
school. They will have the best education and more privileges than
others for the futur.
When I first wanted to take the photo, the
girls were eating a lolipop.
I was chocked by the contrast of the uniforms and the softness of
the lolipops. Then the girls hided the lolipops at the time I took
the photo...
The work and videos of Géraldine
Gallavardin emphasise simple moments of our daily experiences to
re-enact them in a playful and ironical way.
Her main subjects are desire, political and social topics, feminism,
ecology and technology, as well as childhood and the place of popular
music.
The content of her work is contextual and has always been linked
to her lifestyle. She works within the rationale of recycling and
reusing cultural codes, both recent and ancient, creating a visual
collage in a specific response to the present environment. Hybrid
forms are thus born and redistributed.
She likes to create direct emotional situations
where the spectator is directly involved in the artwork. The strong
musical presence in her video works refers to subculture, putting
forward the ephemeral nature of an instant and the immediacy of
happiness ready to be consumed. Her obsessional iconography of happiness
refers to eternal youth. She systematically uses an aesthetic of
childhood and, in some of her works, a poetic of the encounter.
____________
Géraldine Gallavardin was educated in France and did her
MA at the Beaux-Arts in Grenoble before coming to the UK to study
at the Chelsea College of Fine Art (MA). She has had solo exhibitions
and group shows in Cuba, Brazil, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy,
Switzerland, England and France.
She has taken part in events such as a colloquium
on Digital Art (Centro Pablo - Cuba 2003), radios talks (Vraiment:
Féminismes - France 1997), a drama festival as a photographer
for the Pitoprakta Company (in residency at the festival streets
theatre of Châlon sur Sôane, France 1998).
Her work was broadcasted on radio (Resonnance
FM – London 03) and she performed in a experimental music
festival in Copenhagen (!virvarlrivra! Kirken – 2002).
Her videos have been shown in DJ’
sessions in London (Darkside Production – London 2003), and
she has been involved in artistic short films ( « Ganz Hanz
» produced by galleries Analix (Geneva)/Jousse-Seguin (Paris)
1996 – « Tou Tou Toum » produced by Anna Sanders
Film (Paris) 1997).
_________________
She has taken part at the Open Screenings organized at the Whitechapel
Gallery on the 29th of April 2004.
She has performed at the South London Gallery the 31 of July for
music for plants in the Greenhouse installation, a Peter Coffin’s
project.
She is currently preparing her solo exhibition
“Carnets de voyage”, in memory of her great, great grand-father
(artist, patron of the Arts, collector and globetrotter) who travelled
in the Far-East in the 18th century.
The show will take place the 6 of August
2004 at the Kufa Gallery, 26 Westbourne Grove (with the help of
the Al-Saqi bookshop) in London.
geraldinegallavardin@mailcity.com
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