VISUAL ARTS RESIDENCIES

The infrastructure and the accommodation facilities at the Centre of European Culture at the Royal Abbey in Saint-Jean-d’Angély make it possible to welcome international creators for artistic residencies. The facilities at their disposal enable them to carry out their research and to achieve their creations.

The visual artists are invited to carry out their residency over a few weeks or a few months and have access, day or night, to areas which are particularly suited to creative situations.

Visual artists, photographers and dancers discover an exceptional atmosphere of life and work at the Abbey.

Ibai Hernandorena
Ibai Hernandorena is a visual artist working in Bayonne with a degree from the Grande Ecole of Arts, Paris-Cergy. Since 2000, he has exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Pau, the Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille and the Palais de Toyko in Paris. He also recently took part in the event “1%” in Marseille.

Ibai Hernandorena was chosen by the jury who were given the responsibility of studying the replies received following the call for applications issued by the Centre of European Culture. This residency offers the artist particularly privileged creative conditions thanks to the outstanding setting of the Royal Abbey in Saint-Jean-d’Angély and to the support of the Centre’s team.

Audiences from a variety of backgrounds are invited to meet the artist and to share his journey. The Centre of European Culture invites its guest to take his time. There is no obligation on him to get a result.

Saint-Jean-d’Angély is a place of contemplation and inspiration for today’s artist.

You can exclusively follow Ibai’s work on our website.

Artist's dossier

Suzanne Hetzel
The photographer Suzanne Hetzel was welcomed to the Abbey in spring 2004, as part of the project Art’Reseau, then again in summer 2006.

Suzanne Hetzel, an artist invited for a residency, offered the inhabitants she met, the use of photography in a collective vein of exchange, experience and expression. A process of negotiation was put in place to prepare and define the conditions of each person’s participation. What belongs to me and what am I prepared to show? What image does one portray? She has photographed intimate objects as well as public spaces, abandoned spaces and intermediary places between the outside and the inside.
Suzanne Hetzel was born in Siegen, Germany and now lives and works in Marseille..

Alexis Pandellé
In summer 2008, while dressing the town of Saint-Jean-d’Angély in a new skin, Alexis Pandellé took a different look at places so familier they seemed common-place, and at the same time, suggested a different interpretation of the town’s history. The new skin in question were plastic canvasses which would dress various carefully chosen sites including the Abbey and other popular tourist attractions as well as the secondary school, the old fairground and the Eden cinema. Why this eclecticism? The artist’s concern was not only to highlight historical sites but also to offer a work which appealed directly to all generations of people from Saint-Jean-d’Angély. The chosen images brought back memories of the different ages of Saint-Jean-d’Angély : the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the 19th Century and the Gallo-Roman period.

On 14 September, the programme Idd’l on France 3 Limousin Poitou-Charentes broadcast a report on the artist and his work in Saint-Jean-d’Angély.

Annette Wendt

Inventory. Research on motion is born from a combination of pictorial work on the meaning and significance of motion and from looking at the world, seemingly without limits. Annette Wendt invites international artists to confront the interdisciplinary artistic creation to the sociological survey. The artists cooperate for the duration of an event : France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Israel. With their own geopolitical characteristics, each site represents a physical and conceptual stage of the Migrations Project. Observation / analysis / limits. Ideas and organisation are formalised in a precise and rational language. During the course of the transmutation from writing to artistic expression, the very abstract theme of migration has become almost personal for the person who is questioning his identity.

http://www.annettewendt.de/