Julie Favreau
From Her Character
Conversations Montréal | Lyon — Galerie La BF15
Curators—Marthe Carrier and Chloé Grondeau
Julie Favreau's practice lies at the intersection of visual arts, dance, choreography and staged. Her research on performative gesture and movement feeds the production of sculptural objects and vice versa. Through video, sculpture, performance, photography and installation, she creates characters, objects and gestures that compose enigmatic and troubling universes that navigate between the intimate and the unconscious, inspiring a heightened sensorial awareness in the viewer. In her recent projects, eroticism is approached as a form of power: the artist is interested in exploring the erotic texture of the world, the way animate and inanimate things touch and affect one another. Favreau lives and works in Montréal and Berlin. Her work has been presented at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 2017); Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and Fonderie Darling (Montréal, 2016), Edinburg Art Festival (2015), Centre Clark (Montréal, 2012) and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2011). She is the recipient of the Pierre-Ayot Award (2014) and Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art (2012).
LA BF15
La BF15 is a non-profit organization facilitating the production and presentation of contemporary art. Since 1995 the exhibitions presented are based on artists’ project proposals that consider the space and environment of the gallery. La BF15 is a place of research and a studio, where the necessity of ideas, differences, uncertainties and transformations are inherent aspects of the creative process. The invited artists come from various backgrounds and are at different stages of their career: this artistic mix is thus the reflection of a diversified world, the portrait of a large family.
Julie Favreau presents From Her Character, as part of Conversations. Montréal | Lyon, an in situ proposal that continues the research initiated with She Century, a body of variable works that revisits the history and archetypes of women from the position of the artist and their apprehension of the gesture. Commissioned by the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2015, the work was presented at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. In residence at Hospitalfield, in Arbroath, a high place of Arts and Crafts, the artist produces a video in which she superimposes a series of filmed actions. Imaginary stories, in strata, which intertwine.With an economy of means, the artist captures the choreographed body, put in dialogue with the object. A rope, moved by vivid and precise gestures, seems to trace in space and on the ground the contours of a series of mental images. Fictitious figure of the woman, magician, gardener, seamstress, huntress. Archeology of the feminine, through time. The rope, this millenary tool, malleable, almost banal. Intensity of the moment, where nothing is flamboyant, except the surrounding green. A rope, gestures, a movement: a game that we have ourselves, child. Atemporal narrative frame that we try to compose from the objects, sculptures and other devices that surround the video and constitute the installation. At La BF15, the artiste includes some element taken from She Century that she connects to new objects and textiles, this time inspired by the city of Lyon, its history, but also by the tools at her disposal during her residency in Moly-Sabata. She proposes an on-site installation where past and present are combined - of a place, a city, as well as a work. A spiral in motion through which the artist leads us, once again, captive and attentive.
CONVERSATIONS MONTRÉAL | LYON
THE ARTISTS – THE VENUES
Philippe Allard – La Factatory
Jean-Pierre Aubé –Tator
Thomas Bégin – Tator
Julie Favreau – La BF15
Isabelle Guimond – Néon
Noémi McComber – Néon
Tricia Middleton – Néon
Guillaume Adjutor Provost – Bikini
IN RESIDENCY
Philippe Allard – La Factatory – du 15 mars au 4 avril 2018
Thomas Bégin – La Factatory – du 8 mars au 31 mars 2018
Julie Favreau – Moly Sabata – du 28 février au 31 mars 2018
Tricia Middleton – Néon – du 22 mars au 4 avril 2018
MOLY-SABATA
Moly-Sabata is an artist residency offering workshops and resources all year long. It is characterized by its diversity of reception arrangements, its action at the heart of a regional network of institutional partners and its initiatives favoring the production of works thanks to specific financing. Moly Sabata’s public impact is fueled by an annual exhibition while perpetuating a tradition of mediation rooted in its facilities since 1927, property of the Fondation Albert Gleizes. The Fondation Albert Gleizes is supported by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, Département de l’Isère and Communauté de Communes du Pays Roussillonnais for its artist residency program at Moly-Sabata.
Conversations. Montréal / Lyon was made possible thanks to the Canada Arts Council, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie du Québec / Fonds Émérillon de coopération franco-québécoise and the l'Institut français / Ville de Lyon.

Julie Favreau's practice lies at the intersection of visual arts, dance, choreography and staged. Her research on performative gesture and movement feeds the production of sculptural objects and vice versa. Through video, sculpture, performance, photography and installation, she creates characters, objects and gestures that compose enigmatic and troubling universes that navigate between the intimate and the unconscious, inspiring a heightened sensorial awareness in the viewer. In her recent projects, eroticism is approached as a form of power: the artist is interested in exploring the erotic texture of the world, the way animate and inanimate things touch and affect one another. Favreau lives and works in Montréal and Berlin. Her work has been presented at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 2017); Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and Fonderie Darling (Montréal, 2016), Edinburg Art Festival (2015), Centre Clark (Montréal, 2012) and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2011). She is the recipient of the Pierre-Ayot Award (2014) and Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art (2012).
LA BF15
La BF15 is a non-profit organization facilitating the production and presentation of contemporary art. Since 1995 the exhibitions presented are based on artists’ project proposals that consider the space and environment of the gallery. La BF15 is a place of research and a studio, where the necessity of ideas, differences, uncertainties and transformations are inherent aspects of the creative process. The invited artists come from various backgrounds and are at different stages of their career: this artistic mix is thus the reflection of a diversified world, the portrait of a large family.