« Les Messagers » – Exhibition in the MECA in Bordeaux

The MECA, House of Creative Economy and Culture of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, offers a laboratory for artistic testing – something unseen on the scale of a region – to the sectors related to writing, image, live performance and plastic creation on the territory.
While reuniting in a same space the regional cultural agencies dedicated to the live performance (OARA), to the Book, Cinema and audio-visual sectors (ALCA) and the FRAC-MECA (Regional Fund of modern art) ; the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region reinforces significantly the diffusion of its cultural policies.

A true “hub” of the creation “which is currently happening”
Throughout this sharing of spaces, the MECA creates a synergy of interdisciplinary projects capable of accompanying the technological and use transformations of the sectors and to spread beyond its frontiers.

At the crossroads of the disciplines and the territories
This large-scale collaborative equipment, before all dedicated to the professionals of the region, accompanies a strong ambition in favour of a balanced arrangements of the territory which lean on two pillars: the qualification of cultural practices and the respect of the reference documents of the cultural rights of people which grants to everyone the right to participate to the cultural life of his/her choice.

The MECA, tool of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine territories
The accompanying of the professionals and the sectors which is led by the MECA is headed towards and for the territories. This is in this spirit that the Regional Counseil has wanted to give the opportunity to the PEMA to enhance its knowhow, its creators and its actions in the heart of the regional capital and towards a new public.

The Arts and Crafts sector, a priority in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region
The Nouvelle-Aquitaine region is the cradle of the ancestral knowhow such as the tapestry, the porcelaine and possesses typical products such as the Basque clothes, the Charente slippers, the glove-making, the beret… In order to enhance, develop, recognize and innovate, the Region and its partners rally with the aim to share the road map “Leather, luxury, textile and arts and crafts”.
Among the partners, the Experimental Pole of Arts and Crafts of Nontron.
Among the axis of action: the one of “Recognizing and making attractive the knowhow of excellence”.
This exhibition “Les Messagers” is a successful illustration of crossed dynamics implemented on this arts and crafts sector. It allows to introduce these gestures, materials and why not make young and adults wanted to be initiated to these crafts jobs and perpetuate these knowhows.

Natacha Baluteau works the enamel, alliance of the metal, glass and fire. She explores the technical specifications that she harnesses in order to tell stories of materials and inventing a new aesthetic.
Natacha Baluteau is interested in the vestiges, the marks of buried worlds, veiled, at the limit of the visible, impalpable yet present.
Her universe is built patiently and is full of objects on a knife edge, at the edge of the crumbling, the disappearance. Inspired from the reality, she shapes an imaginary of forms, spaces, representations of a world in movement which induce the idea of a becoming.
Every work is a try to express, interrogate what remains, what subsists, the print, the blank space, the idea of cycle, the material from which we are constituted, the substratum source of the living being.
For this exhibition, she proposes to approach the specific theme of believes. The art of the enamel has invested the religious culture for a long time especially throughout the creation of reliquaries or ex votos dedicated to the prayer.
This is consequently a series of enamelled objects, drawings and engravings arranged in an altarpiece which will be visible in the agora of the MECA. Every object presented will be provided with an history: the one of its creation, the meeting between the metal and the fire.
Photo : Portrait of Natacha Baluteau ©Natacha Baluteau

Pierre Carcauzon followed a training to become an industrial drawer and discovered the sculpture at the end of the 1980s. Since 2001, he dedicates himself to this activity as craftsman and artist-author. In his workshop in the Charente region, he works on the creation of works related to the patrimony: historical monuments and old buildings, as well as the creation of modern works.
For this exhibition he proposes a personal creation which ally metal and stone. Marked by the context of the sanitary crisis we are going through and the closure of the cultural places several times, Pierre Carcauzon will show the concept of isolation and quarantine.
Photo : portrait of Pierre Carcauzon ©Perrine D.

The workshop Macrealux was created in 2018. After a PhD in chemistry, several years in research and teaching, Marie-Pierre Dupérier has chosen to enter a training of lampshade creator and creating her company the same year. Today, she conceives and sells lights and lampshades for individuals and professionals.
Passionate since childhood by dancing and stitching, she has made for the MECA, a light inspired by the tutu of classical dancers. Tarlatane, silk, muslin, paper from the Got mill in Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat will be used, noble materials in order to create a unique and aerial ceiling light which remembers the universe of the dance.
Photo: portrait of Marie-Pierre Dupérier ©La boîte à réclame

Arnaud Erhart discovers the drawing, painting and the basis of ceramic in the family workshop located in Châteauneuf-La-Forêt. After having studied decoration on porcelain in Limoges at the beginning of the years 2000, he settled up as potter in 2003.
In 2007, he discovered wood firing in Anagama kiln, the work of stoneware and porcelain in the workshop of Tristan Chambaud-Héraud. Since then, each of his sculpture has been shaped and modelled with the technics of plaque and coil in stoneware and porcelain.
With his sculptures, Arnaud Erhart intends to carry on the approach of the man who searches to immortalise scenes from the everyday life and his contemporaries with realistic, pictorial or sculptural performance. Representing individuals who are witnesses of our time, our culture, our world means to leave a mark according to him. Such as a photography, he searches to freeze the present moment.
For this exhibition, Arnaud Erhart has chosen to present a series of “Weshs” inspired by the style of the hip hop culture from the American and French urban sink estates. The “Weshs” introduce the present, the ordinary, the daily life as a possible place for artistic expression.
Photo: portrait of Arnaud Erhart ©Arnaud Erhart

Patricia Masson creates culinary art items in porcelain and stoneware as well as decoration objects for the house. This is in nature, travel and poetry that she gets her inspiration.
Her brand AlbedÔ created in 2011 claims to be a timeless universe which inspires the serenity. Her handmade production is composed of several collections in little series and is made with three technics: modelling, pouring and turning of porcelain and stoneware.
In the MECA, she will propose a retrospective sculpture of her knowhow and inspirations.
Patricia is interested in anthropology, ethnology and ceramic history. After a residence in Peru, she has begun a series of “Cuchimilco”. These protective statuettes – link between the world of living beings and dead people – left un the graves and near cemeteries or now offered as lucky charms.
Her sculpture will especially show her researches on the Cuchimilcos.
Photo : portrait of Patricia Masson © Patricia Masson

Fanny Garrigue assemble repetitive forms in metal in order to make sculptures. She shapes the iron wire refired for more than 20 years, twist and tie it, use it as a pencil line in order to draw volumes in the space.
It has been two years that she has started to practice welding while continuing her work of repetition but not inventing the drawings every time anymore: most of them already exist and possess an history, often industrial.
With simple and universal subjects such as trees, birds, the human body, the group, the movement, she tries to bring lightness, a breath in order to give a poetic feeling to the violence of the world.
Fanny Garrigue sculpts a cranes’ flight for the MÉCA. She chooses this symbol which travels through the ages, cultures and artistic expressions.
The agora, traditionally a place of reunion for the population, will become a place for poetic departure inspired by the show of nature.
Photo : portrait of Fanny Garrigue © Fanny Garrigue

The problematic of the body has always been present in the artistic work of Marie-Paule Thuaud. After an early stage of career as computer engineer, she has chosen to start a course in applied arts in order to become a graphic designer. Attracted by the artistic environment, she has created a street theatre company in which she danced on stilts with her body painted and realised performances of bodypainting in the world of night work.
Later, in parallel of her graphic designer work, she went to evening classes for jewel creation in Paris. In 2016, this activity of passion has become her main activity.
With Marie-Paule Thuaud, the jewel is not seen as a classic fashion accessory but as a jewellery-armour-sculpture. This is the research of difference and exception which animates the creator. She is strongly influenced by the heroic fantasy, the story of the Amazons, the tribal jewelleries, the exoskeletons, at the frontier between the sculpture and the jewel.
Marie-Paule Thuaud will present a jewellery-armour-sculpture as a tribute for the biomechanical of the artist H.R. Giger who works especially for the cinema.
Photo: portrait of Marie-Paule Thuaud © Peter Winfield

First occasional workers as decorative assistants and constructors in the entertainment field, their formation has been eclectic. In 1993, they created the company Véro & Didou in order to promote their personal work focused on lights, decorative objects and furniture. They are referenced in Paris by big companies such as Le Bon Marché, Les Galeries Lafayette, La Samaritaine, Roche-Bobois… and are also widely represented internationally. In 2002, they left Paris and got settled in Dordogne in order to continue their activity choosing to favour realizations created in tandem with their clients. This is from materials such as steel, aluminium, slate, wood, copper, tin, glass, plaster, marble and welding technics as brewing, hammering, burnishing, veneering, and oxy-cutting that they conceive and realize their creations to which locksmithing items get added.
Vero & Didou have chosen to present light sculptures for the MECA, sculptures which refer to the dimension of the agora architecture. These creations also show their research around the light shaping, a research they conduct for nearly thirty years.
Photo: portrait of Véro & Didou © Elisabeth Herman

Ona has graduated from the Beaux-Arts in the Ryerson University of Toronto in 2001. She has studied the ceramic arts in the College of Art and Design in Ontario. She is mainly interested in the old technics of fabrication and firing. She makes her own enamels, works with the clay-coil technic and fires in a kiln carved in the ground.
For her, ceramic is pottery. She only makes pots: she likes the old and primitive pots. They are part of her Lithuanian rural culture.
For the exhibition in Bordeaux, she will propose a series of Narva pots, primitive ceramics inspired by the Neolithic period in this region of the Baltic Sea. A composition of 5 to 7 Narva pots with different forms and sizes, each of them are engraved with distinct marks : a message transmitted by Ona throughout the ages.
Photo: portrait of Ona Volungeviciute © Ona Volungeviciute