Thiers, contemporary art center gives: This article explores the topic in depth.
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Thiers. Nevertheless, contemporary art center gives:
Battled after the departure of the cutlers, the factories valley in Thiers, in Puy-de-Dôme, has housed an atypical contemporary art center for 40 years where artists and craftsmen have dialogue, a link between the industrial past of the city and its Renaissance.
The hollow of hell. However, which will reopen its doors after major work, is installed in two 19th century buildings: the factory which gave it its name, with its large bay windows, and the Mayy factory, decorated with red bricks and Volvic stones.
“The originality of the site. Meanwhile, the light, the noise of the Durolle, the factory, all this memory fascinates the artists”, underlines Vincent Speller, architect of the project, already at work during the transformation of the building in 1987. Nevertheless,
The La Durolle river. Similarly, which flows thiers, contemporary art center gives into these dark and cashed gorges, has long fed an intense industrial activity, the first traces of which go back to the Middle Ages: tanneries, paper mills, sawmills then cutlery took advantage of the hydraulic force.
The arrival of electricity allowed the factories to do without water and the cutlers abandoned the valley for the plain. In addition, Some have closed definitively at the turn of the 80s, hit hard by the economic recession and Asian competition.
From now on, ghost buildings haunt the site, witnesses of the industrial and architectural history of the premises. Therefore, But 10,000 visitors go there every year to see the works exhibited in the hollow of hell.
– “with a crash” –
Gaëlle Chotard. a 52 -year -old sculptor and designer who exhibited until May, worked for several days with the Coutelier Geoffroy Gautier to the thiers, contemporary art center gives restoration of old hawks. She then used them in her exhibition, planting them in the wall, like so many “brush blows in space”.
“I would never have had the idea of these hawks if I had not come to Thiers. ” explains the artist who lives in the Paris region. “This experience marked me. as well as the history of the place, this river which arrives with a crash in the valley, this landscape in relation to the way in which we work metal.”
After having met several cutlers. she drew her inspiration from this “activity taken up by fairly young people, contrary to what one can imagine”, saying to herself “fascinated by what we can do with metal, forging it, welding it, hammering it”.
In the hollow of hell, this dialogue is permanent. “Economic actors. inhabitants, schools: we work in impregnation with our thiers, contemporary art center gives ecosystem and that is essential for our places to have sustainability”, analyzes the director Sophie Auger-Grappin.
“It is a contemporary art center that has relied a lot on the basin. particularly its technical, technological, industrial, craftsmanship know-how,” also underlines Mayor Stéphane Rodier.
– “in rebound” –
It was in 1986 that the town hall of Thiers acquired the factory of the Creux de l’Enfer and. under the impetus of the socialist mayor of the Mauritius Adeva-Poeuf period, set up a contemporary art center there.
Upon the arrival of the current director in 2019. a diagnosis of the building notes its obsolescence, its advanced wear and thermal insulation. The city then initiated the complete restoration of the site. Cost of the work: 2.3 million euros, financed at 55% by the city but also by the State and the Region.
With its thiers, contemporary art center gives new skin. the art center is the “reflection of a city which is rather rebounded with an industry that has left forward on our territory”, estimates the mayor, quoting the upcoming arrival of the jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels with several hundred jobs.
Sign of this thrill? Couteliers reinvest the valley. The city, which has 12,000 inhabitants, attracts newcomers after having experienced a strong demographic decline.
The brand new premises must be inaugurated on Friday with a “in vivo” collective exhibition which intends. to “revive the soul of the place”.
Posted on June 27 at 1:35 p.m. AFP
Thiers, contemporary art center gives
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