June 2023 - Toucher Terre, la sculpture céramique, at the Espace Monte Cristo (Fondation Villa Datris)

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Still in June, I was intrigued to find out, I no longer remember how (Instagram probably), that there was a contemporary ceramics exhibition involving Josèfa Ntjam going on in a space I didn't even know existed, not all that far from my flat: the Espace Monte Cristo. 

It turned out to be an interesting show in a lovely place. The Espace Monte Cristo, which opened in 2018 but was presumably soon suspended by the lockdown,  is a beautifully renovated former industrial space; not a single, hangar-type workshop, but an old shop-front with two storeys of rooms in the deep house behind, arranged around two or three small patios, where, it seems, packaging was stored. To how outdoor pieces, including a small fountain, the patios had been turned into gardens for the duration of the exhibition.



'Josèfa's room' also included, at the far end, a work I liked (pictured above) by a US artist, Erin Jane Nelson, I'd never heard of. That isn't surprising as (a) there are so many artists these days it's impossible even for better-informed people than I am to keep up and (b) I know so little about ceramics. But when I looked her up later, it turned out she was working with some very fancy gallerists. No surprise there.

Another artist I took to very much was Alex Zablocki, who actually has some inventory at the Galerie Italienne in Paris. Having seen that some of his smaller pieces, available in London, were reasonably priced, I contacted the Galerie Italienne, but the larger-sized work available in Paris was nearly ten times the price, so I let the matter drop.



The 'anchor' and probably the main draw of this show was a big installation of the Finnish artist Kim Simonsson's 'Moss People'. These are intriguing, slightly creepy, gnome-like, flocked green figures I'd already seen at a couple of fairs. They're too cutesy and Tolkien-ish for me, but I can understand the appeal.


Here are a few more photos from the show:






When I came out of the building at the end I noticed, further up the street, a big, white, art-déco church. This turned out to be the spectacular Église Saint-Jean-Bosco, finished in 1938 as part of a wider project to build a number of new churches for the working-class neighbourhoods built on the outskirts of town, where the old 'fortifs' had been. This one is somewhat hidden away on the rue Alexandre Dumas, which I suppose is why I'd never noticed it, but it has a soaring steeple outside, and is richly decorated - chunky ceramics, glistening mosaics and glowing windows, inside by the Ateliers Mauméjean. It also still has, just as strikingly, its original art-déco seating. 


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