For the past six years, Francesca Piqueras has been working on a project about large, abandoned sea installations left to rust and ruin. Following two series, one devoted to cargo ships headed to Bangladeshi shipbreaking yards, and another to the beaches of Mauritania, Piqueras now returns to the Galerie de l’Europe with Fort, a series of photographs of marine facilities in the North Sea.
The exhibition features two types of photographs:
—abandoned military forts, the Maunsell Forts, built on water during the Second World War a few miles from the Thames Estuary to defend London against German mines and raids.
—Oil platforms on a maintenance yard off the coast of Scotland
“The moving light and tide gives these sculptures life,” says Piqueras. “Time passes and leaves its mark. The history of contemporary industry settles here.”
Francesca Piqueras grew up in a family of artists. Her parents were friends with Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Salvador Dali, at whose house she would spend her holidays as a child.
EXHIBITION
Fort
April 10 – May 17, 2014
Galerie de l’Europe
55 rue de Seine
75006 Paris
