Henry/Bragg

ECOUTE BIEN LA CAMPAGNE

Tours Aillaud, Nanterre, Paris

Tours Aillaud, Nanterre, Paris

Porte de Bercy, Paris

Porte de Bercy, Paris

Tours Aillaud, Nanterre, Paris

Tours Aillaud, Nanterre, Paris

Boulevard Périphérique, Paris

Boulevard Périphérique, Paris

Écoute Bien la Campagne
Écoute Bien la Campagne
Écoute Bien la Campagne

Nature has a way of seeping into our cities. Not just through the cracks in the concrete, but through the cracks in our language too.

When, in 1850, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte described Paris as “le coeur de la France” he was not talking geographically. Three years later, Georges-Eugène Haussmann destroyed the city’s tangle of medieval alleys to impose wide boulevards and radial geometry. By improving the city’s circulation, he turned roads into arteries and made metaphors reality.

We have long sought to differentiate ourselves from nature. But our language always betray our confusion. Thomas Hobbes viewed the nation like the body of a man. René Descartes saw animals as machines. These days we think of the brain as a computer and attempt to read cities like organisms. A community is an ecosystem. Or is it the other way around?

Julie Henry and Debbie Bragg are fascinated by community – especially overlooked or endangered subcultures. They have pointed their lenses at football supporters and players of arcade games, at bingo nights and amateur talent shows. They have immersed themselves in the lives of refuse collectors, competitive gardeners, and middle-aged Cambridge mods.

During their residency at Château de Sacy, they sought to reconnect with the land. They planted cabbages, ate nettles, went exploring with a hand-drawn, eighteenth-century map, and, most importantly, organised the village’s annual pétanque tournament.

Once, such villages formed the basic unit of human existence. Today these communities are under threat. In the late 19th century, half of France lived off the land. Now nearly 80% are in cities. Urbanisation has long been associated with economic growth. But, unlike the growth of a plant, economic growth is measured in averages. Such averages conceal as much as they reveal.

Agriculture too is enslaved by efficiency. Automation hollows out the countryside. Yet, even as avowed city-dwellers, Henry/Bragg did not find Sacy-le-Petit a place of emptiness or silence. Their film takes its title from a children’s game: Ecoute Bien la Campagne. They made audio recordings of thunder, birds and the bells in the village church, ringing out a working day that has all but vanished. These sounds have been paired with footage from Paris’s urban fringes: factory chimneys, tower blocks painted like clouds, and the endless tunnels and intersections of the Boulevard Périphérique.

Architect Richard Rogers criticised the division created by the Périphérique. “I don’t know of any other city,” he said, “where the heart is as detached from its limbs.” In his 2015 Paris master plan, Rogers proposed “green arteries” as part of a “new metabolic approach”. The metaphors of Louis-Napoléon return: once again Paris is a beating heart – but of what?

Cars blur by as Henry/Bragg take us through the tunnels of the Périphérique. The buzzing of bees suggests the passing of a way of life. For industrialised agriculture has decimated global bee populations. The phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder sees workers simply disappear; the queen is left, alone.

The worker, the queen: human social roles imposed upon the natural world. Could we, in turn, be in danger of colony collapse? Rogers said that Paris needs to “attract a young, dynamic and international workforce”. After all, there’s no honey without worker bees – either in nature or in the city. But the division between the two is never pure or clear. Somehow our metaphors always muddy the waters.

Tom Jeffreys


Previous Work

The Surrey Hills, 2012

The Surrey Hills

, 2012. Video still.
Blooming Britain, 2009

Blooming Britain

, Martingale Court, 2009
B.I.N.G.O, 2013

B.I.N.G.O



Pot of Gold, Gala Tooting, 2013. Giclée Print. Courtesy of C&C Gallery.
Henry/Bragg Henry/Bragg are artists Julie Henry and Debbie Bragg. Web: henrybragg.com Works
2015

North Circular

Edge of Chaos

B.I.N.G.O

2012

The Surrey Hills

2011

Blooming Britain

2004

Dyed in the Wool

2003

Out of Time

2001

X

2000

Talent Show

1998

Going Down

(in collections of James Moore, Frank Cohen and MOCP Chicago) Solo exhibitions
2016

Écoute Bien la Campagne

, Ateliers d’artistes de Sacy, Château de Sacy
2015

B.I.N.G.O

, Barge House, London

B.I.N.G.O

, C&C Gallery, London
2011

Blooming Britain

, RHS Garden Wisley, Hyde Hall, Rosemoor and Harlow Carr
2010

Game Play

, The Mermaid Centre, Bray, Ireland

Rushmoor in Bloom

, Garden Museum, London
2006

Dyed in the Wool

, Great Eastern Hotel, London
2005

UK Today

, Presentation Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
2004

Dyed in the Wool

, Metropole Galleries, Folkestone

Dyed in the Wool

, Millais Gallery, Southampton
2003

Out of Time

, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London
2000

Talent Show

, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London Selected Group exhibitions
2015

B.I.N.G.O

and

Edge of Chaos

, Fingers Crossed, Manchester

B.I.N.G.O

, London Art Fair
2014

X

, Bewegte Bilder, Galerie im Marstall Ahrensburg, Hamburg
2013 & 2014

RCA Secrets

, London
2013

Going Down

, Spectator Sport, MOCP Chicago

Discernible

, ZAP, Bond House, London
2012 & 2013

Blooming Britain and The Surrey Hills

, Wild New Territories, Camley Street Natural Park London, Teck Gallery Vancouver and Berlin
2012

Going Down

, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico
2010

Dyed in the Wool

, One Shot, B.P.S 22 Gallery, Charleroi, Belgium
2006

Human Game

(curated by Francesco Bonami), Stazione Leopolda, Florence, Italy

The Beautiful Game: Contemporary Art and Fútbol

, Brooklyn Institute of Contemporary Art, New York

You’ll Never Walk Alone

, OK Centre for Contemporary Art, Austria
2005

Rundlederwelten

, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin

Talent Show

, Star Star, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, USA

Dyed in the Wool

, Upon Further Review, Hunters Gallery, New York
2004

Sports and Art

, Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Only A Game?

, Impressions Gallery, York
2002

Strangers

, ICP Triennial of Photography & Video, Anri Sala, Francis Alys, Shirin Neshat, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, International Center of Photography, New York

Somewhere better than this place

, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, USA
2001

Going Down

(curated by ICA Ukraine), Dynamo Kiev

Sense of Wonder

(curated by Harten & Mascher), Herzliya Museum of Art, Israel

Talent Show

(selected by Francesco Bonami), Tirana Biennal, Albania

Sport in der zeitgenossischen Kunst

, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Germany

The Fantastic Recurrence of Certain Situations: Recent British Art and Photography

(curated by Kate Bush), Sala de Exposiciones del Canal de Isabel II, Madrid
1999

Going Down

, Edinburgh City Gallery, Edinburgh

New Contemporaries 99

, South London Gallery and Exchange Flags, Liverpool