Les Animaux modèles - The Concert
Friday 2 September 2022, 7 - 9PM
Princess Alexandra Hall, Royal Over-Seas League
Poulenc Les Animaux modèles, FP 111
Translation adaptation - Joseph Havlat & David Schofield
Narration - Zeb Soanes
Artwork (in order of appearance) - bill daggs, Matilda Barretta, Laura Bygrave, Yun Kim, Miro King & Kalman Pool
I. Le petit jour
"Allow me to transport you to a simpler time, a simpler world. This is an age when animals spoke, and sometimes dressed in human clothes; an age of story-telling and eternal lessons for us all."
II. L'ours et les deux compagnons - The bear and the two companions
" I’d like to introduce you to two young men, happy-go-lucky types and good friends, who are rather down on their luck and acutely short of cash. Now we are sometimes told that great need can precipitate great invention, and so these two put their heads together to devise a cunning, money-making scheme. The brilliant idea they come up with involves selling a bearskin to their neighbour the fur trader, even though
a.) said bearskin was still very much in service as an integral, insulating part of said bear, who is ... b.) still very much alive."
bill daggs - The Legendary Bear Pelt [RDR2 - Cowboys & Eatonites]
front stage, vertical TV screen
video, duration 00:06:05
"Act I:
The scene is set in a contemporary environment, possibly a pub, or an office function, where two friends, both keen gamers, discuss the upcoming event of a certain person dressing up as a bear for larks at the party, possibly a colleague, or a prime minister. They despise said person, they fantasise about skinning that bear suit and selling its pelt for their social gain, like in a favoured popular computer game. Their quest to seek the knowledge of how to achieve such a task sends them down a YouTube wormhole, stumbling through hours of footage, though never leaving their position, at the bar. They slip off into an inebriated dreamlike state, and as the alcohol is a depressant, they find themselves in a maudlin conversation about power struggles and how, no matter how hard they try, the poor hardly ever profit from the rich and foolish. And how can they "eat the rich" if they can’t even skin the fur?”
- bill daggs, 2022
bill daggs, The Legendary Bear Pelt [RDR2 - Cowboys & Eatonites], 2022, video, duration 00:06:05
III. La cigale et la fourmi - The grasshopper and the ant
“Well, what a grand old time you must have had! So, what about this as an idea? Now that you’ve got all that singing out of your system, why don’t you hop off … and do some dancing instead!”
Matilda Barretta - A Summer Wasting
stage backdrop
acrylic on calico, 244 x 489cm
"A Summer Wasting depicts the moment of confrontation in The grasshopper and the ant story, in which the grasshopper asks the ant for a loan of food after having spent the summer singing, and is refused by the ant, who spent their time gathering food for the winter. It’s the turning point of the changing seasons, a clashing of their ideologies, of how the characters define hard work and community, and a moment of simultaneous strength and vulnerability on both sides. The format of the arch-shaped backdrop aims to evoke stage set design, aligning the painting with the music of the performance, since it is derived from a ballet score. The title is taken from a song by the same name by Belle and Sebastian. The lyrics muse on a similar topic to the fable, of how best to spend the summer."
- Matilda Barretta, 2022
Matilda Barretta, A Summer Wasting, 2022, acrylic on calico, 244 x 489cm
IV. Le lion amoureux - The love-sick lion
"So if real love is hard to endure, maybe you’ll indulge me this short story of love?
It dates back to the time when lions, along with various other species, aspired to human rank and status. ‘And why not?’ I hear you say, since they were pretty much on a par with us in those days, at least in terms of courage, and intelligence perhaps, and let’s not forget their looks."
Laura Bygrave - 1. Meadow | 2. Declawed/Detoothed | 3. The Dogs | 4. Bones
four windows to the right side of the Hall
ink and acrylic on polyester, 320 x 147cm (x 4)
"I approached the movement of The love-sick lion as an opportunity to tackle face-on some archetypal themes like love, deceit, violence, despair and loss. I started by breaking the fable down into 4 parts or mini movements, to create the basis for four window paintings. In the first scene we witness the flush of infatuation when the lion spots the girl among the sheep in the fields; we are then moved into the sad scene of the filing of the lion’s teeth and claws, watched over by the conniving father-in-law to be; dogs are then released and the helpless lion is torn into pieces; and finally I imagined the despair of the girl as she lies bereft on the now piled heap of her betrothed’s body.
Each of the four scenes provided me with the basis for a book of drawings and as is the case with my practice I found many disparate but strangely linked images pulled themselves into the book. I looked to fiction, art history, graphic comics, ancient artefacts - Junji Ito’s comic book Uzumaki and it’s spirals figured in the girls hair, Bruegel’s smoke plumes were used as the lion’s mane, I found Etruscan tomb carvings of lions and the flattened drama of ancient Assyrian lion hunts allowed me to break the lions body down into tense floating limbs, the gothic poise of the women in various paintings of the lamentation over the dead Christ was present in the final image of the girl in despair, and the lion bones she sits on linked somehow to Giorgio de Chico’s metaphysical biscuits and Philip Guston’s piles of legs.
Images from the book of drawings were scaled up to create four translucent window paintings. Painting on see-through material allowed me to think about the painted surface as a transitory, fragile medium, as a threshold through which to view the buildings and ordinary scenes outside. Considering colour as a shifting quality in painting led me to Chagall’s stained glass windows and the ethereal light they omitted. During the performance, as with any stained glass window, the light of the setting sun will change the colour and the mood of the paintings. They will gradually intensify in colour and the line will strengthen as the natural light fades and the artificial lights of the concert hall illuminate them - just as the fable intensifies in its seriousness as the story unfolds. I consider the paintings as cartoons in the old sense of being sequential and also in the quality of the line. Similarly to the small space between the boxes around comic strips, the thin wall that divides the windows acts as a ‘gutter’ where we fill in the moment in between, we complete the action in our imagination."
- Laura Bygrave, 2022
Laura Bygrave, Meadow, 2022, ink and acrylic on polyester, 320 x 147cm
Laura Bygrave, Detoothed/Declawed, 2022, ink and acrylic on polyester, 320 x 147cm
Laura Bygrave, The Dogs, 2022, ink and acrylic on polyester, 320 x 147cm
Laura Bygrave, Bones, 2022, ink and acrylic on polyester, 320 x 147cm
V. L'homme entre deux âges et ses deux maîtresses - The middle-aged man and his two mistresses
"The older woman would try to pluck out his black hair, leaving more white, so that his head might more closely match her own. And the younger woman would try to deforest the white hairs, to support a more youthful look.
It didn’t take long before our thoroughly plucked hero was bald."
Yun Kim - Those who seek to please everybody please nobody
front stage, two vases
hair piece, artificial flower, aluminium wire, ceramic vase, variable size (x 2)
"The fable is about grey and nothingness. In the story, a man who strives for perfection ends up in a miserable situation, which is nothingness. However, nothingness can also be a hope in the context of art. This is meant to elicit a different way of thinking by providing a gap between possibilities. In the fight between white and black, they eventually come together resulting in the creation of grey. In this way, boundaries are dissolved and emptiness is achieved.
In this perspective, the flowers are completed to please nobody. And by doing this, the flowers can achieve to please everybody."
- Yun Kim, 2022
Yun Kim, Those who seek to please everybody please nobody, 2022, hair piece, artificial flower, aluminium wire, ceramic vase, variable size (x 2)
VI. La mort et le boûcheron - Death and the woodcutter
"In the blink of an eye, unable to continue, the woodcutter gives up all hope. And seeing no solution to his miserable lot he makes the ultimate decision: he calls out for Death herself to come to him. An elegant, masked woman appears.
“Allow me to help you,” she offers. “If you’ll only come with me, I can make all of your troubles disappear.”
Miro King - „Mr. Woodcutter, could you leave me a 5-Star Rating, please?”
stage backdrop
oil on canvas, 205 x 162cm
"When I got notified to work on Jean de la Fontaine's Death and the woodcutter, I thought that it would go hand in hand with my paintings, since most of my figures are actually inspired by masks, mythologies and fairy tales.
Nowadays, a lot of services are dependent on online customer reviews or ratings and in this rare instance, the woodcutter is asking death for his assistant; hence why I pick this title.
Portraying Death has always been a fascinating theme in the art, and there are certainly many iterations depicting him in a more skeletal form. However, I have always imagined that if someone happens to encounter death in person, it should be an otherworldly experience. Death in my mind should be a formless entity swirling around you, similar to smoke or energy. It would tower over you, and you could possibly see all the claimed souls flowing within.
Another element I wanted to go more in depth to is the location where Death and the woodcutter encounter each other. In folklore and fairy tales, enchanted forests are often described as places of uncertainty, liminality, transformations as well as sceneries inhabited by fantastical beings. Making the encounter be witnessed by mythical creatures, in which they are even holding phones to record it, would add another layer of thrill and humour to that scene."
- Miro King, 2022
Miro King, „Mr. Woodcutter, could you leave me a 5-Star Rating, please?”, 2022, oil on canvas, 205 x 162cm
VII. Le combat des deux coqs - The battle of the two cockerels
"They clamour around, desperate to adore and protect him, and in his honour begin a suggestive dance. And so it is that our all-conquering cockerel, with the hen of his dreams and a clutch of swooning admirers, has his moment of glory.
So, my dear friends, be sure not to let your pride ruin your victory!"
Kalman Pool - LE COMBAT
front stage, inflatable
sealed PVC polyvinyl chloride plastic, 200 x 176 x 176cm
"I've been listening to the music for weeks and searching for inspiration from some key elements, such as love, death, desire, and battles, and eventually just came out with this unique hybrid of the three—two cocks and a hen, where they are fighting and striking."
- Kalman Pool, 2022
Kalman Pool, LE COMBAT, 2022, sealed PVC polyvinyl chloride plastic, 200 x 176 x 176cm
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INTERVAL
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Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals
Narration - Zeb Soanes
Mathilde Milwidsky violin
Emmalena Huning violin
Emily Pond viola
Joseph Pritchard cello
Gwen Reed double bass
Marie Sato flute
Lewis Graham clarinet
Joseph Havlat piano
Dominic Doutney piano
Joe Richards percussion
Concert images courtesy of Piranha Photography