gethan&myles:
An Anatomy of Collective Joy
During its closure, the Foundation offers a digital program around the exhibition “My cartography: the Erling Kagge Collection”, starting with the contribution of the artist duo gethan&myles.
Essor / Un rêve de vol (Soaring / A dream of flight) and Unselfie… explore the origins of leisure culture, the commodification of ‘free’ time, the democratisation of photography, and the key role that the camera once played in the creation and propagation of collective identity.
Discover the two slideshows online (10m40s and 4m50s)
(Unselfie… starts at the end of Essor / Un rêve de vol (Soaring / A dream of flight))
Originally created as part of gethan&myles’ exhibition for Invisible Archives, Manifesta 13, these two slideshows were drawn from an archive of over 8 000 photos taken between 1897 and 1940. These photos are preserved in the Archives Municipales de Marseille and the private archives of the ‘Excursionnistes Marseillais – Association pour l’essor Provençal’.
Slogans are taken from 1910s-1940s advertising found in the Excursionnistes’ quarterly bulletins – and from the ‘proverbes des Excurs’ featured in the margins of these pamphlets. The font used is Sainte-Baume: created by Formes Vives and based on the Art Deco sign found above the Excurs’ former HQ, 33 allée Gambetta, Marseille.
Enjoy your flight!
gethan&myles
Following a chance encounter on a soggy south-London zip-line in 2008, Gethan Dick (Irish) and Myles Quin (Irish-ish), have spent the intervening period working together – and with others. From these encounters a varied, many-headed project has been spawned: a body of work built in response to the real world, and in an unfailing relationship to concrete experiences, lived and shared with others. Participation and collaboration are at the heart of their approach – and of the works resulting from it. Their projects are a reflection of territories traversed and people met. Whether intervening on landscapes or interacting with people’s behaviours, they strive to build bridges between art and life – arousing questions and emotions; inviting the public to ‘re-see’ and reassess. Through their installations, films, sculptures and books, gethan&myles celebrate the capacity of art to enrich our understanding of – and feeling for – the real.
Their work is supported by several international institutions, such as: ADIAF, CAIRN, DRAC (PACA and Hauts-de-France), Fotokino, Frac PACA, Louvre-Lens, ministère de la Culture, MUCEM and musée Gassendi (France); Barbican, British Library, ICA, RCA, Tate Modern, Wellcome Trust (Great Britain); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Germany); Manifesta (Netherlands); eyebeam (USA); Havana Biennial (Cuba). gethan&myles are represented by Double V Gallery (Marseille).
