2022

Le Rêve en Réalité - la Ville Révélé (The Dream in Reality - The City Revealed) is a collection of individual works all in the same format and arranged together forming an archive of Richelieu in France. The town created by Cardinal Richelieu and designed by Jacques Le Mercier in the 17th century. I looked at the city through the eyes of an outsider, one intrigued by what has happened in the years since it was conceived as an ambitious and extraordinary endeavor. Now 400 years later it remains a living town, unique in its birth and modern through its inhabitants. 

 

I approached the project with a similar process to others, for example The  City of London Inventory and Reconnaissance. Studying a place intensely until it becomes familiar and known. Not by reading about the place but by experiencing it, walking repeatedly and then documenting it in photographs and drawings. I traced and redrew the town’s lanterns, finials, windows, stones and pediments over and over so their form became embedded in me and in the work. All the resulting documentation is completed in a standard 10x15cm format and after the exhibition is stored together in a metal archive drawer in the reception room of the Town Hall for people to view and piece together if they wish.

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