The After Lucy Experiment are Charlotte Beaudry, Aline Bouvy, Delphine Deguislage, Céline Gillain, Aurélie Gravas, Claudia Radulescu
During the summer of 2010, a residence has been spontaneously organized in a remote house of rustic-modern architecture that belonged to the painter Lucy Fabry, great grandmother of Celine Gillain. The house is located in Stoumont-Congo in the valley of the Ambleve, a place still marked by the Battle of the Ardennes.
During one week, the border between the group and the individual has changed dramatically. Wearing identical pinafore dresses, it is as chaste dissidents with a violent sense of self-derision and contained decadence, that they have combined their influences and savoir-faire.
After this residence and the natural formation of what seemed to become ‘a group’, ideas for several projects have started to emerge. First of all, there was the choice of the collective’s name, TALE – The After Lucy Experiment, in memory of Lucy Fabry.
For almost one year, the project of a publication, designed by Alice Merveille, has been put into execution. A vinyl under the name ‘Solid Bank’ has also been recorded during the winter of 2011.
On January 26th, 2012, The After Lucy Experiment presented Sigourney ‘tchète’ River, a sextuple rave opera that took place at the Galerie Mélanie Rio in Nantes :
« Sigourney ‘tchète’ River is a performance referring to Nantes important part in the slave trade during the 18th century, leading to a considerable enrichment of the urban monumental landscape. And one of the most famous sculptures the city knows by local artist Emmanuel Frémiet (1824-1910) is a ‘Gorilla kidnapping a woman’, which made a great scandal exciting the crowds with its allusions to rape when it was shown at the 1887 Salon. The 6 concrete hands also refer to the gorilla’s hands poachers used to sell at a good price to the tourists to make ashtrays or hunting trophies.
Those different stimuli brought us to the American actress Sigourney Weaver who -literally or not- incarnates women fighting/taming a foreign and powerful beast (in Gorillas in the mist, Alien(s), Ghostbusters, Escort Girl, Working Girl), inventing new fantasized female roles. In Alien, Ripley becomes the ship commander only because the men in command are killed by the monster. Each of us chose one of Sigourney’s roles and played it during the performance, like six survivors coming back on the disaster site dismember the ornamentation of a bourgeois town and eat it. We put on our self-made costumes while a sophisticated soundtrack was playing loud and a choir of women singing on our emblematic actions: we threw our grandmothers bones away, ate a chocolate fireplace like cannibals, called out our mother the guenon so she would bring us back home, we danced in a trance and painted our figures on blank canvases, took our disguises off, and when we finally arrived in Hollywood we ate all the money the gallerist had given us. For info: in Walloon ‘tchète’ means ‘pussy’. »
BIOGRAPHY
August 2010
Residence in Lucy Fabry’s house (great grand mother of Céline) in Stoumont-Congo
March 2011
Under the name ‘Solid Bank‘, The After Lucy Experiment records a vinyl album in Marc Morgan’s studio, a one day performance of ‘figurative’ music
August 2011
Presentation of the vinyl ‘Solid Bank’ at Wiels-Center for Conteporary Art, Brussels, in the frame of Charlotte Beaudry’s finissage
September 2011
Exhibition at Etablissement d’en face projects, Brussels and presentation of the publication ‘The After Lucy Experiment’. In the frame of the exhibition a series of events have been held:
- Film screening evening (The Handmaid’s Tale, Pic-nic at Hanging Rock)
- A lecture about the photographic novel by Jan Baetens and presentation of the photo novel ‘Droits
de regard’ by Marie-Françoise Plissard
- A trip to Stoumont, place of the first residence and to the Musée ‘Décembre 44’, walk in the forest of
Congo followed by a pic-nic
- Performance and concert by ‘Solid Bank’
December 2011
Temporary Shop à Galerie aliceday (Brussels) ; Editions, drawings, multiples, photography & video
January 2012
‘Sigourney Tchète River’, performance and exhibition at Galerie Mélanie Rio, Nantes
March 2012
« VACANZA » PERMANENTE, NICC Antwerpen
MAY 2012
Performance in the frame of « VACANZA » PERMANENTE, NICC Antwerpen
JANUARY 2013
Concert at Caserne Fonck in liège
FEBRUARY 2013
« La nuit de la poésie » Vanessa Quang gallery, Paris
JUIN 2013
Performance in MACAK CRACOVIE
SUMMER 2013
Clip: TO RIDE A HORSE by TALE
