Battre la Campagne

Abandoning the pavement for dirt roads, and housing estates for ants' nests, the artists of our 2014 – 2015 season are calling on us to take a break from the din of the everyday. They’re inviting us to get out a little, to drop in on their yards and gardens, sit down at their tables, go on excursions with them that will get us out of the rut. Yves Chaudouët is the associate artist of the Art Centre’s 2014-2015 season: Battre la Campagne (Scouring the Fields).

The expression Battre la Campagne (Scouring the Fields) suggests, among other things, heading off in all directions, strolling casually, rambling maybe. So this is a season for roaming, for not being afraid to mistake one work for another, or an oil painting for a glass sculpture; for turning daydreaming into an exact science.For a year the country will be sprouting at La Criée, an art centre transformed into a combination of wheatfield and active fallowland. Four exhibitions in a row: solo efforts by Gareth Moore, Yves Chaudouët and Jérémie Gindre, and the group show a l l e r dehors (g o i n g outdoors). All sorts of events – the Green Flashes – will back up the exhibitions: concerts, encounters, performances, surprise visits, etc. In return La Criée will be scouring the countryside: artists Thomas Tudoux and Bevis Martin & Charlie Youle will be heading up local creative projects in agricultural high schools and other urban and rural establishments, and there will be further off-site activities as well. Yves Chaudouët is the Scouring the Fields guest artist. He will be offering an exhibition spilling out beyond the walls of La Criée and into the Rennes countryside; doing the scenography for a second exhibition; inviting his theatre company and all sorts of other fertile sources of inspiration; and in general fuelling the programme with his interests, ideas and investigations. Scouring the Fields in their own thoughtful way, the study days he is organising aim at triggering dialogue between different fields of knowledge, together with meetings between artists, biologists, landscapers and philosophers as they compare their different ways of reading landscape and envisioning creativity. To keep everyone up to date, throughout the season La Criée will be publishing occasional reviews – Les cailloux – that follow up what’s happening inside and outside the art centre with pieces by critics and researchers, artistic contributions, interviews and more. A way of broadening everyone’s horizons. Scouring the Fields Is drawing landscapes and faces Is turning the art centre into a living art laboratory Is beating to the rhythm of a growing leaf Is g o i n g outdoors Is getting lost Is gathering herbs Is (self) cultivation Is learning Is discovering Is look-seeing

Raymond Queneau, Courir les Rues, Battre la Campagne, Fendre les Flots © éditions gallimard