Summertimes creativeness

It is not because you are on holidays that you stop making art, Art inhabits every moment of your life. 

Graduation is a very formal ceremony, and everybody is dressed the same with the gown and the hat.  But you can single out yourself by tiny detail as a  subtile thumb in the nose to the protocol. 

You are allowed to have a brooch to fix the gown so I put my first barbie brooch I ever made as a lucky charm.  and I had my dolls head hills -always manage to slip a doll head! 

I choose this graduation dress because the pink stripe was matching with the purple bordure  one of the gown (purple for MA)  for 5£ and a friend told me it looked really expensive "You have the art to make things cheap look expensive" and suddenly look sad "For me it's the contrary"… 

Ready to ride for graduation -who said you can't cycle in heels and cocktail dress?  

 I took part in the Handbag performance of the site specific theatre designer  Geraldine Pilgrim for the opening part of Open East Festival –curated by the Barbican as part of the reopening of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Stratford.

                                                                                                                                                                    picture by Niraj Dewan

"HANDBAG is a celebratory performance involving lots of people, great music, dancing and handbags made for ballrooms, theatres and unusual spaces inside and out. 

A woman enters and puts down her handbag. A beat begins, a mirror ball turns and the sound of a classic dance track fills the air……
“positive and uplifting. Made me want to dance the night away.”
Audience member, BAC" 

Performance wise, it was a great experience. For the first time I was performing in a show that people are not expected to see.  We were distributed in the park among walkers, festival-goers, families having their picnic, Before the performance starts some people were noticing our presence  "what are theses woman doing?  are they protesting against something", When the Michael Jackson song starts you can see surprise  and amusement in people eyes.  

"The handbag" turns a fashionable accessory, into a performative medium. You had to choose carefully your handbag, it had to stay steady when you put in on the floor, I choose one that I found in my grand mother closet, I never use it because it's not handy at all. Geraldine didn't want me to have it because of the pattern but I insisted for keeping it. 

The dress code was simple but making all the difference between performance and a simple flash mob: a plain coloured dress of the style you like, which was creating an unity among diversity.

I was spoiled with choices, because I love colourful monochrome dresses but I choose my yellow dress from Religion which was floating with the wind during the dancing!

Specially for the occasion, I made some "handbag hearing" with barbies accessories, I guess I was unconsciously inspired by Miss Frizzle  in the Magic Bus Cartoon who is always wearing earrings according to the situation or the theme she is going to explore. 

As a child, I was fascinated by Miss Fizzle incredible earrings and outfit

Yellow team! Lieve is an amazing old woman who can dance on Mickeal Jackson  (a mix of tribal dance and rave transe) more longer than any young people! 

Number 1 and number 2 (last performer to go first to start!)
Lego necklace-hand bag earrings 

The challenge de l'Aber Benoit is a kind of nautical rally where there is a race on the sea, a picnic on an island and some games on the beach. This year the theme was "British vs. Bretons so I feel I had to be part of the organising team. 

We stage the arrival of the Queen on the Beach (introducing the Sex Pistol into the official God save the Queen anthem) followed by an Harlem Shake. I even bring a throne on the beach (gold sprayed chair, when you start with the gold spray you never stop.) 

I made this dress out of two Union jack flags, creating a recomposed geometrical pattern.  it's nearly the colour of the French flag but more aesthetic and stylish, used a lot as a print in fashion. 

My Mum was like "you are not going on the boat like that are you?  I was :"that's fine I can just roll it up. At the end the train was completely dragging in the the water but it dried quite quickly.  

the Union Jack coat designed by Bowie and Alexander McQueen for the Earthling album cover (1997) exhibited at the V&H London 

When we organised the challenge, so we have the queen, the guard, the princess…Sophie would you like to be the National anthem? So this is one of my most conceptual costume. 

Because i'm dress as the national anthem, kind of allegory, and with the lego necklace as a fragmented union jack i'm am the A-lego-ry 

I felt it would be quite  ironic to  show off my "patriotism" -who said I was SO French?  

I found this boots in Brick lane market for 5£ when I saw them I felt it was a sign from destiny and that I had to buy them. A friend gave me this red leather jacket really "camden style" and I just stitch some small union jack flags on it.  

Anne-Sophie is in the place

The Kervinoize is an electro party that we organise every year (for 3 years) in the bunker in my garden (built by the German during WWII), For the occasion my brother who is a street-artist in his spare time and I re-painted all the bunker. 

For the jacket I gold sprayed a snake imitation-fake-leather jacket that I found in the trashes (when you start gold-spraying things, you never stop, everything that you touch become gold) I stick some dolls limbs covered by a Picard plastic glass for emulsion that I take from last christmas (my mum wanted to throw it away and i was no please put them in the dishes washer it can be useful one day -You need a lot of space when you are doing costume design because potentially EVERYTHING can be useful, which drives mothers crazy…. 

I wanted to be an humanoid retro-futuristic creature half way between Metropolis and Gattaca, an humanoid that can capture energy through the printed circuit of its jacket and grow her own vital organs through cloning and organ culture on directly on its clothes in order to replace deficient part of its organism. Someone at the party told me it was really disturbing  because she gave birth to premature babies and the size of the hands were exactly the size of her daughter's hands. People can a bit shocked and or upset by this type of costume, it left no one indifferent but at least it engage conversation   because people relate this costume to their own experience. 

I love the iridescent colour or board print circuit  and its  relief pattern that I already use for my electric crash experience costume 2 years ago.  I made a bionic bra sewing the board print circuit on my swimsuit  (I had to take down them all  the day after because i had nothing to go to the beach). 

Lady Gaga sitting  on a chair made of old circuit boards.

It was a post apocalypse party where we were survivors to a nuclear catastrophe and became mutant robot forming a secret society. I create a pagan temple in a niche of the bunker. 

I found a old clock without dial in my grandparents attic.   I liked the idea of the clock without dial as a metaphor of a stopped time after apocalypse and I filled the hole with a doll head.  We took all the christmas decorations of my neighbour. The electric  candle really that  reproduce the flickering effect go the flame matched perfectly with the kitsch syncretic atmosphere I wanted to create. 

My brother was afraid of lightening up some real candle because he was afraid of an explosion in the bunker with the with the toxic vapours of the sprayed-paint...

Ken-lobster and  golden Crab shell-baby face 

For this installation I was inspired by my friend and Mentor Sue Kreitzman and her installation Gold of the pharaohs (f you think about it, the bunker is a bit like the inside of a pyramid) 

also by her piece the "Time keeper" in her house. 

Gold of the Pharaohs , Sue Kreitzman

"The time keeper," Sue Kreitzman 

I found this add on a French magazine ,I feel it reflects the way I see lego a a trans-generational game and a way of life rather than a simple toy. 

"Chez nous, nous croyons au potentiel de la liberté créative de l’enfant ; la créativité sans limites, multiforme et propre à chacun, la créativité sans jugements, spontanée, quitte à sortir des sentiers battus…: « on pardonne tout à leur créativité !! »

This is all the women of my family on my father's side. With this 3 generations of women you  you can see that you wear lego at every age! 

Theses two necklaces have the same base but the lego bricks are differently arranged, can you spot the differences? 

 According to the combination of colours, you got different feeling, my grandmother like white and blue and made something more colourful for my young sister but the base is the same. 

My groupie picture with Alan Stivell my great uncle, great celtic singer and master in celtic harp would he wear a lego triskel? 

The lego coupling plate (originally to make link  train wagon) are perfect to make necklace for children (because you attach them by the front) lovers or best friends! 

My beautiful sister Isabelle wearing for me my lego necklace giving them something exotic- it's look like we are doing a shooting in the Seychelles but thus us just Brittany! 

The Benniwhite is a white party on the beach, like Eddie Barclay's party in Saint Tropez or "Dîner en Blanc" but because Brittany is always rainy you usually wear white polar, rain coat and boots rather than white bikini. 

I usually never wear white because you need to be tanned, it's not colourful and get easily dirty.

 I made my white lego necklace for the occasion using just white bricks, love the gold en white combination.  

Because the theme is "white" my brother dressed as a  ghost and wandering among the people dragging its fake nut made with a football balloon. I love this random presence on every pictures!