Lieu d’exposition
/ Exhibition place
Biography
Collectif 5 was founded in 2013 in Quebec City by five visual artists: Marilyne Bissonnette, Sarah Booth, Marion Gotti, Andréanne Jacques and Nathalie Vanderveken. Born from a desire to work together, the collective’s objective is to develop creative projects that link the plastic and conceptual concerns of its members while seeking to transcend the boundaries of their respective mediums; print art, drawing, sculpture, photography, sound art and video. Different visions are thus called upon to cohabit to materialise a new whole. In 2014, Collectif 5 was awarded the Première Ovation-Arts Multi research-creation grant, and in 2015, the same organization awarded a dissemination grant. Favouring site-specific installations in places linked to everyday life, the collective’s work is mainly exhibited outside institutional venues. The five members are notably at the origin of two independent dissemination projects that gave rise to Entre les murs (2015), in a flat in the Limoilou neighbourhood, and then to the exhibition Refuges (2016) in the Ateliers du Réacteur in Quebec City. Collectif 5 also presented the work Nature Vivante as part of Manif d’art 8 (2017) and the installation Stevie Wonder Paper at Canadian Bacon 6 (2017) in Quebec City. In September 2021, the artists create and exhibit the sculptural installation En friche as part of the Laboratoire JE[U]S, in the heart of the atrium of the Université de Sherbrooke in Longueuil, in partnership with the artist-run centre Agrégat. From February 15 to May 28, 2023, Collectif 5 presents the sculptural and sound installation À cinq mille de profondeur at the Maison Hamel-Bruneau in Quebec City, as part of the group exhibition De l’autre côté du miroir curated by Anne-Sophie Blanchet.
Approach and works on display
En friche (2021)
The work En friche is inspired by the spontaneous vegetation that invades unexploited urban spaces. Surveyed daily by the Collectif 5, these places are for the artists refuges, islands of freshness and beauty that infiltrate the urban landscape. Reminiscent of the quietude of wild spaces, these wastelands contrast with the concrete of the city, the speed of city life and the optimization of space. Their presence invites wandering and roaming, which the artists of the collective abandon themselves to as they scour these spaces to gather the hundreds of plants that will become the primary motif of the work. Transposing this urban flora into the studio, the collective inks and prints on paper each plant collected and then implants the prints in the installation, thus creating sculptural still lifes. Like an ode to these abandoned sites, the works evoke a fragmented landscape, a compartmentalized nature that nevertheless invades the spaces as they permeate our imaginations. En friche comes to life in the very place where it is installed; the large stems move as visitors pass by and cast shadows thanks to the sun’s rays that seep into the space.
Works by the artist
