BORDEAUX.- In this year of global challenges, CAPC musée hits the ground running with an exciting programme of exhibitions and events. February starts with two new presentations: a historical survey of the activities of the independent publishing house Beau Geste Press, active in the southwest of England from 1971 to 1976, and Ali Cherri’s Somniculus, the first installment of the exhibition cycle The Economy of Living Things, curated by Osei Bonsu for the tenth anniversary edition of the Satellite Programme the CAPC has been co-producing since 2015.

BEAU GESTE PRESS
The independent publishing house Beau Geste Press was founded in 1971 by the Mexican artists’ couple Martha Hellion and Felipe Ehrenberg. Together with their two children, they moved into a farmhouse in Devon, in the English countryside, where, joined by a group of friends that included the artist and art historian David Mayor, they formed "a community of duplicators, printers and artisans."

Beau Geste Press was active until 1976, printing the work of visual poets, neo-Dadaists and international artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement such as Ulises Carrión, Helen Chadwick, Ken Friedman, Carolee Schneemann, Yukio Tsuchiya and Cecilia Vicuña. Specialising in limited-edition artists’ books, it published the works of its own members, but also those of many of colleagues worldwide. In the spirit of cottage industry, it adapted its methods and scale to its needs, keeping all stages of production, from design and printing to distribution via the postal network, under the same—bucolic—roof.

The exhibition surveys the history of Beau Geste Press through the 75 books published by its founding members and their guests or occasional visitors during its five years of existence. It documents the creativity, productivity, working methods and international influence of this short-lived community, which ran an early version of the artist residency. Although it operated from the periphery of the main artistic centres of its time, Beau Geste Press was undoubtedly one of the most productive and influential publishing ventures of its generation.

The printed matter on display is punctuated by a series of aluminium sculptures by the French artist Xavier Antin that conjure up operations or gestures related to the duplication or revelation of images, purposely aestheticising the myths surrounding the sacrosanct space of the workshop.

Entitled "Something of Beau Geste in Common," a series of interventions, workshops, and specific projects involving collectives, artists, non-profit organisations and students from the New Aquitaine region accompanies this historical presentation.

Curator: Alice Motard

Ali Cherri: Somniculus
Ali Cherri’s practice is motivated by the ongoing investigation into the place of archaeology in the construction of historical narratives. Focusing on the spaces of conflict and catastrophe in the highly-visible Levant region, Cherri’s work often observes the fragile presence of historical violence in its every day environment. In Somniculus (Light Sleep), he turns his attention towards the deepening relationship between the processes by which artefacts are excavated, collected and classified, and understood through controlled systems of representation. Capturing the inner life of French ethnographic and anthropological museums, it presents a world in which fragments of past civilisations have come to represent the universality of human experience.

The Economy of Living Things is an exhibition cycle concerned with the constant movement of bodies, plants, animals, artefacts and other cultural products across real and imagined borders.

Curator: Osei Bonsu