Participating artists:

Olga Adorno, Jean-Luc André & DDAA, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Virginie Barré, Neal Beggs, David Bellingham, Pierre Beloüin & Optical Sound, Ben, Joseph Beuys, Alain Biet, Pavel Büchler, Mircea Cantor, Sophie Calle, Patrice Carré, Carted, Raphaël Cuir, Béatrice Dacher, Gaël Derrien, Jean Dupuy, Elgaland-Vargaland, Tim Etchells, Christelle Familiari, Hans Peter Feldmann, Robert Filliou, Forced Entertainment, Julie Fortier, Joël Hubaut, Bertrand Gadenne, Michel Gerson, Dan Graham, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Raymond Hains, Jacques Halbert, Nicolas Herisson, Anabelle Hulaut, Michel Journiac, Sharon Kivland, Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux, Yveline Lecuyer, Lefevre Jean-Claude, Hervé Leforestier, Pierre Leguillon, Jean-Philippe Lemée et Gilles Mahé, Philippe Lepeut & Ecart Production, Les Tétines Noires, Claude Levêque, Eric Madeleine, Roberto Martinez, Jonathan Monk, Laurent Moriceau, Valérie Mréjen, Daniel Nadaud, Yoko Ono, Jean-Louis Orengo,ORLAN, Regis Perray, Jean-Luc Parant, Mathias Pérez, Joachim Pfeufer, Alex Pollard, David Shrigley, Ross Sinclair, Daniel Spoerri, Elsa Tomkowiak, Ragnar Tournarie & Denis Rouillard (Cranes Records), Jacques Villeglé, Thierry Weyd & les Editions Cactus, Laurence Weiner, George Wylie.

Hulaut & Clarke reveal their artistic journey through objets, editions, multiples and artists’ books that they have collected along the way. Complimentary objects have also been borrowed from both public and private collections.

The ground floor exhibition space is given over to the archives of NCDGQAD (Nous cherchons des gens qui aiment dessiner), a project by Gilles Mahé and Jean-Philippe Lemée. NCDGQAD was an art school by correspondence created in the 1990’s. Mahé and Lemée both imagined and put into practice a veritable pedagogical institution to teach all codes of representation. They even created their own evaluation and correction system. This project is situated in the continuity of ideas already explored by Robert Filliou, an emblematic artist notably for Hulaut and Clarke.

Upstairs, Pierre Belouïn and Optical Sound propose a new version of the installation «The Circulating Library», created for the first time in 2008 in collaboration with Claire Moreux & Olivier Huz. This work is an attempt to represent all the possible relation at the the heart of the independent artists’ record-label, Optical Sound. It takes the form of a complex molecule inspired by the drawings of Buckminster Fuller. Comprising all the edited recordings released by Optical Sound since 1997, the artwork is destined to grow and grow as new records will be released. To listen to the integrality of the recordings, one would have to dismantle the composition, deconstruct the links.

Numerous vitrines have been dispersed throughout the médiathèque. Hulaut and Clarke have chosen to show the relation that the art world has with books and other publishing supports. In effect, since the industrial revolution, artists haven’t only engaged in the reproduction of their work, they have also appropriated all sorts of tools (photography, printmaking) to produce multiple objects (postcards, pin-badges, matches, toys).

Si quelques pièces proviennent de collections privées et publiques, un grand nombre d’entre elles ont été récoltées par Hulaut et Clarke sur leur chemin. Certains objets multimédias (CD, DVD) et des ouvrages sur les artistes présentés sont empruntables à la Médiathèque.

Not all the objects presented in the vitrines share the same status : most are true miniature works of art, others are ephemeral objects that contributed to the making of an artwork, but there are also commercial products that have been derived from various art practices. Most of the objects in the exhibition belong to Hulaut and Clarke. Others have been borrowed from both public and private collections. Certain multimedia objects (CDs & DVDs) have been acquired by the Médiathèque and can be borrowed by the public.