After Lyon, Paris and Mougins, it is now the Arsenal in Metz that is showing the works of the 2015 HSBC Photography Prize winners. The opening was last weekend and we interviewed the two young artists, Maia Flore and Guillaume Martial, eight months after the announcement, after the first three exhibitions and the publication of their monograph. Each place presents the opportunity to redesign the exhibition and to rethink the way in which visitors will get to the heart of the different series. François Cheval, this year’s artistic advisor to the Prize, has created a different scenography appropriate to each of these places. This exhibition is the penultimate stage on this journey before it is presented at the Maison de la Photography in Lille next December. This last will show some new works made by the winners.
How did you approach the different exhibitions across France up to this one at the Arsenal in Metz? And how did the collaboration go with the artistic advisor, François Cheval ?
Guillaume Martial : Before everything else, with François, we made a selection of images to be printed. After that, all we had to do was set up a dialogue between the architecture of the exhibition site and the artwork. Each time we had to think the hanging in connection with the place. It’s an experience that has to be lived. I particularly enjoyed the hanging here, in Metz, just because I saw my work with a new eye. François Cheval was an invaluable help, each time he did a great job. We were really happy with this new challenge. The works are well displayed, here, you can understand our works in a better way.
Maia Flore : My meeting François Cheval was particularly important for me. He was greatly involved in each scenography. I had complete confidence in him. I really needed to be involved with a curator like François. As I make few images, I know my images by heart. His eyes allowed me to have a fresh look at my work. He is the first person to use a new vocabulary for my images . He didn’t only speak of the lightness and the softness, going to the aesthetic side of my work, he found a certain gravitas. That allowed me to look at it differently and to notice that there were other paths in my universe. His work as curator allowed me to rediscover other things and to face up to choices that I would probably never have done by myself.
The fifth and final exhibition opens in two months at the Maison de la Photography in Lille, you’re going to show some new artworks. Can you reveal something about this new work ?
G. M. : As far as I’m concerned, the new artworks that will be shown are the result of work done during three and a half months in the framework of a residency in a psychiatric hospital in Dordogne.I think that I’m going back to my first love: the image in movement. For the future exhibition, there will be still pictures and video installations. Concerning the content of the project, it’s less of an architectural work and deals less with the urban space than what is shown here today. On the other hand, I’m always going to make use of the person I’m interpreting. It will be a more personal universe, more intimist that will deal with madness, the connection to the body in this enclosed universe that is a psychiatric hospital. In this work, I’ll also question the photographic medium. I’m going to revisit the pioneers of photography like Étienne-Jules Marey or even Eadweard Muybridge. My installation will be a nod to the inventors of the image in movement. But I’m not saying any more about it…
M. F. : For Lille, we are going to extend the work that has already been done, by playing with the form with new mediums. People will also discover some installations, at the moment it’s under discussion, perhaps there will be one or two, depending on the space. All this will be discovered in December…
EXHIBITION
Prix HSBC pour la Photographie 2015
Maia Flore & Guillaume Martial
From October 3rd to November 1st, 2015
L’Arsenal de Metz
3 Avenue Ney
57000 Metz
France
http://www.arsenal-metz.fr
