Catalogue > At random
Laure Prouvost
DIT LEARN
Video | hdv | color | 15:44 | France, United Kingdom | 2017
In 'DIT LEARN' the viewer is enticed into an abstract, pre-verbal condition from which to rediscover the learning of language, words and their associated meanings. With a fast-paced procession of objects and images, an accompanying aural and written narrative directly implicates the viewer.
Laure Prouvost was born in Croix, near Lille, France, in 1978. After graduating from high school, she studied plastic arts and entered the Saint Luc de Tournai Institute, Belgium. In 1999, she went to London to study at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (CSM) and settled in the capital. She became the assistant of conceptual artist John Latham, who taught at CSM until 1966. She then then to Goldsmiths, University of London where she obtained her MFA. Winner of the Turner Prize, Laure Prouvost is known for her lush, immersive films and mixed-media installations. Interested in confounding linear narratives and expected associations among words, images, and meaning, she has said that in her works “fiction and reality get really tangled.” At once seductive and jarring, her films are composed of a rich, almost tactile assortment of pictures, sounds, and spoken and written phrases, which appear and disappear in quick, flashing cuts. They are often nested among installations filled with a dizzying assortment of found objects, sculptures, paintings, drawings, furniture, signs, and architectural assemblages, based on the themes and imagery in her films. Prouvost does not allow for passive viewing. Through her work, she often addresses viewers directly, pulling them into her unruly, imaginative visions. Her work was exhibited at the Tate Britain in 2011, then at the Whitechapel Gallery in Londonand the Images Festival in Toronto in 2012. In 2013, her work was presented at the Lyon Biennial and at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London. In 2014, she set up a display at the Grand Palais for the FIAC (International Contemporary Art Fair). Her work was also exhibited at Danspace in New York and at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City the same year. In 2016, her work wasdisplayed at the Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland, the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt, and the Red Brick Museum in Beijing. In 2009, she won the EAST International Award. For two consecutive years, she was the winner of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. In 2011, she won the Max Mara Prize for Women, thanks to which she obtained a residency at the British School in Roma and at the Pistoletto Foundation in Biella. In 2013, she won the Turner Prize with her film «Wantee».