CONSERVATION – gethan&myles

Credits: Indigo leaf beaten with limestone; Agharas plant-dye garden

 

 

 

gethan&myles are an Irish/English collaborative duo of artists who live in Marseille and who came to work in Digne on the invitation of the CAIRN Art Centre, which is interested in their participative artistic approach.

After several weeks of artistic residencies during which they got to know the town and its people, the artists wanted to implement their Digne artistic project throughout a whole year, according to the seasons and encounters. From Conversation, several workshops of preparatory creation, they gradually developed Conservation, the title of this major participative work, which will be created jointly with local people from spring 2017.

gethan&myles will come back to create Conservation with you in the spring of 2017.

“Conservation: of nature, of an artwork, of a foodstuff… Paradoxically, man – the great destroyer – has long sought to protect and preserve. This desire to maintain the elements in a state of constancy fascinates us. Fear? Hubris? Human kindness? Naturally, it’s important to safeguard, but how to resist movement, the mutability of the world? The river flows on (calmly or otherwise). Time passes. Birth, death. Birth, death. Birth… And so it goes. Yet, faced with the enormity of time, we dig our heels in and push against the tide: foolishly, madly, beautifully.

Conservation is a participatory artwork built with CAIRN, the Musée Promenade, A Fleur de Pierre and the people of Digne.

Conservation is a participatory artwork built with water, stone, fruit, time and the voices of the local people.

A multi-layered project, it takes its inspiration from Digne – a town ‘entre-deux‘ (caught between) – and the people who live here; it explores frontiers and transitions: between town and nature, nature and man, object and emotion, vegetable and mineral, past and future.

These different layers enable us to work with a great diversity of people of Digne and to have a deep and meaningful exchange with them. The result is a textured participatory work which expresses the richness and complexity of the participants and the environment, as well as the interplay between them.”
gethan&myles

Throughout the entire winter, the cyanotypes and anthotypes produced during the Conversation workshops – organised by gethan&myles in association with the people of Digne – will continue to be exhibited. These workshops are the first part of the Conservation major participative project.

You can see Mauvaise Herbe, Rue de l’Ancienne Mairie, and Exhibition, Rue Capitoul, throughout the entire winter in the old town centre of Digne-les-Bains