25 April— 22 June 2008

www.ica.org.uk/education

Written by Fran Solley and Kathy Williams

Loris Gréaud

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ICA Education ProgrammeOur dynamic, artist-led Education Programme provides opportunities for

schools, families and community groups to engage in creative ways with the

ICA’s exhibitions. The gallery is open for school visits between 10–12pm

Monday—Friday.

This pack is geared towards secondary school students pursuing Key Stages

3 and 4. Teachers may find it useful to visit the exhibitions before bringing a

group. If you would like to plan a trip to the ICA, get in touch and find out how

we can meet the needs of your group.

Contact Emma-Jayne Taylor, Director of Learning:

phone: +44 (0)20 7766 1423

email: emma-jayne.taylor@ica.org.uk

For more information and to view our archive of previous learning activities,

please visit www.ica.org.uk/education

What We DoArtist Led Projects: Our programme includes artist-led workshops with schools

and innovative collaborations between artists and community groups.

Teachers Packs: These are available with each exhibition and include

exhibition notes, suggested discussion points and activities for your visit,

how to prepare before attending the exhibition and proposed activities for the

classroom.

Insets: The ICA offers professional development sessions for teachers as

an opportunity to meet with artists and gallery staff, and discuss how to

incorporate contemporary art into young people’s education.

Schools Mailing List: Keep up to date with the exciting education projects,

events and workshops happening at the ICA by signing up for our mailing list.

Educators Openings: These private views are dedicated to education resources

and offer ideas for your pupils’ visit to the ICA. Come as a teacher or as yourself

to enjoy a relaxing evening in the gallery.

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Loris Gréaud ‘This is the story of the Studio, a vast workshop distended in space and time. Even now, machines are whirring, plans are planning, and electrons spinning, all according to a most fantastic choreography.’

From the Cellar Door libretto

Loris Gréaud’s new installation at the ICA, titled Cellar Door (Once is Always

Twice) consists of three almost identical rooms and draws on his interweaving

interests in art, architecture and music as well as the notion of doubling and

repetition. The repeating elements within the rooms include: high-speed

automatic doors which open like shutters; special light-emitting speakers

designed by the artist (used to play the opera); a wall-mounted text piece

rendered from mirrored lettering; and a carpet with a pattern derived in part

from architect Buckminster Fuller’s experiments with the geodesic dome.

Cellar Door is an ambitious artistic experiment that has a range of

manifestations. One is Gréaud’s installation at the ICA; another is the exhibition

at Palais de Tokyo; a third is an opera – scored by Thomas Roussel and with a

libretto by Raimundas Malašauskas and Aaron Schuster – which will be staged

at the Paris Opera at the end of the year; and a fourth is an actual studio space

which Gréaud is building for himself on the outskirts of Paris.

The notion of an artist’s studio is fundamental to Cellar Door, operating as a

symbol of imagination and potential, and as the starting point of a perpetual cycle

of activity; but also manifesting itself as an actual physical space, one which will

provide Gréaud with the tools to realise future projects, and which will ensure

that Cellar Door remains at the centre of his artistic practice. The artist considers

all of these diverse manifestations of Cellar Door as a single object.

Gréaud’s installation at the ICA will be subject to a number of periodic

interruptions, one of which is the arrival of three identical figures serving black

champagne. As the character Bucky Wonka says in the libretto for Cellar Door,

“What about black champagne bubbles on moon rocks as an aperitif? … Don’t be

afraid of them – the champagne bubbles are speechless, it’s you who will do the

talking. Just be careful to drink them at room temperature, otherwise the room

will start multiplying!” When asked which room he is currently in, he says, “It is

the room of choosing another possibility. A room where the door that brought

you here was itself another possibility … The room of another possibility always

leads somewhere else. Whereas in the previous rooms reality becomes art, in this

one art exits into reality.”

The title of Cellar Door is inspired by JRR Tolkien’s essay English and Welsh

(1955), in which the author and linguist remarked on the beauty of the words

‘cellar door’ – they have since become a famous example of euphonious phrasing.

This expression, and Gréaud’s Cellar Door project as a whole, are developed

further in Celador – a bag of sweets, complete with advertising campaign,

conceived by the artist and available from a vending machine in the ICA’s bar.

The twist is that the sweet has absolutely no taste, and the artist’s intention is

that whoever eats it can project whatever flavour they like onto it – thus reflecting

the open-ended and collaborative nature of the Cellar Door project as a whole.

Gréaud has described his works as “machines where things are transformed,

distorted and displaced… In my work, the origin and production of a piece are not

meant to coincide.”

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Themes

1. Opera Libretto

2. Collaborative relationships

3. Celador

4. Repetition and doubling

5. Audience

6. Cellar Door

ThemesArt And Design—Key Stage 3

Exploring and Developing Ideas:Discuss and question critically, and select from a range of visual and other information.

Investigating and Making:Investigate, combine and manipulate materials and images, taking account of purposes and audiences.

Exploring and Developing Ideas:Record and analyse firsthand observations, to select from experience and imagination to explore ideas.

Investigating and Making:Experiment with methods and approaches and synthesise observations, ideas and feelings.

Evaluating and Developing Work:Analyse and evaluate own and others’ work, express opinions and make reasoned judgements.

Exploring and Developing Ideas:Discuss and select critically, and select from a range of visual and other information.

Links to Other Key Stage 3 Subjects

Music: Responding and reviewing appraisal skills:Communicate ideas and feelings about music using expressive language and musical vocabulary to justify opinions.

Listening and applying knowledge and understanding:Identify contextual influences that affect the way music is created, performed and heard.

English:Speaking and Listening: Group discussion and interaction- contribute to group discussions.

English:Writing to inform, explain, describe:Present material clearly, using appropriate layout, illustrations and organisation.

English:Speaking and Listening: Use evidence and anecdote to enrich and explain ideas.

English: Speaking and Listening: To speak fluently and appropriately in different contexts, adapting talk for a range of purposes and audiences:

English: Writing to imagine, explore, entertain: Use imaginative vocabulary and varied linguistic and literary techniques.

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Themes

1. Opera Libretto

2. Collaborative relationships

3. Celador

4. Repetition and doubling

5. Audience

6. Cellar Door

ThemesArt and Design Key Stage 4

How ideas, feelings and meanings are conveyed in images, artefacts and other media.

Understanding of a variety of approaches, methods and intentions and the contribution of contemporary practitioners.

How ideas, feelings and meanings are conveyed in images, artefacts and other media.

Surface qualities and the effect that different techniques have on these surfaces, and how these different techniques can be employed to good effect in design.

Undertake visual research using primary and secondary sources and record observations, experiences and ideas in appropriate ways.

Know and understand a range of work, from contemporary practice so that they are able to demonstrate an understanding of continuity and change in art, craft and design.

Art and Design Key Stage 5

The production processes of artworks in a range of non-traditional media, such as mixed media, installation, site-specific work, assemblage, digital, film and video.

How ideas, feelings and meanings can be conveyed and interpretedin images and artefacts created in the context of chosen area(s) of study within AS/ A2 Subject.(Art and Design, Fine Art, Graphic Design, Alternative Media, Three Dimensional Design, Multimedia and Textiles)

How ideas, feelings and meanings can be conveyed and interpreted in images and artefacts created in the context of chosen area(s) of study within AS/ A2 Subject.

An appreciation of solid, void, form, shape, texture, colour, decoration, surface treatment, scale, proportion, rhythm and movement in their chosen media.

How images and artefacts relate to social, environmental, cultural and/or ethical contexts, and to the time and place in which they were created.

The working vocabulary and specialist terminology which is relevant to chosen area of study within AS/A2 Subject.

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Themes

Before Your Visit

During Your Visit

After Your Visit

ActivitiesEnglish

Read the story of Alice in Wonderland again, paying particular attention to the language that Lewis Carroll uses.

Using a dictionary, look up the meaning of some of these words before your visit to the ICA: Palindrome, Phono- Aesthetic, Euponious Phrasing. Onomatopoeia.

As you walk around the exhibition, enjoy one of the ‘celador’ sweets and write down words to describe what taste the exhibition projects onto the sweet.

Write a few notes about why Loris Gréaud has chosen to use a mirrored writing in his exhibition- how does this change the meaning of the words as you read them?

Experiment with different word games and poetry techniques to describe your visit to the ICA. For example, you could write a Haiku- a poem made up of seventeen syllables- one line of five syllables, one line of seven syllables and another line of five.

Research Loris Gréaud’s other work and exhibitions, and write an informed review about his exhibition at the ICA.

Design an information leaflet or an advertisement for ‘Celador.’

Music

Listen to a variety of different operas and discuss what you like about them.

With friends, practice reading a story and improvising a soundtrack for it.

As you listen to the Libretto played during the exhibition, try writing a string of words about what the music makes you think or feel.

Write a short composition based on the Loris Gréaud exhibition to be performed individually or in a group.

Using photographs from Loris Gréaud’s exhibition from the ICA website, education pack, or from other sources, create music to play as a backdrop for your own slideshow. You can also add your own images.

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At the heart of Gréaud’s project is the notion of the artist’s studio, a symbol of the

creative space, a space of imagination and transformation, a dreaming factory.

Gréaud’s works open up multiple pathways of thought, it is no surprise that one

of the artist’s favourite books is Alice in Wonderland. Many aspects of Cellar

Door construct an extraordinary childlike universe where nothing is quite as it

seems, and yet everything makes sense according to its own rules as we move

between rumour and fact and back again.

•Howdoyouthinkthesubjectoftransformationinfluences

Gréaud’s practice?

•Howdoestheinstallationmakeyoufeel?

Cellar Door has previously been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and in

a reflection of Gréaud’s artistic process; the work will change as it travels to other

locations after the ICA to the Yvon Lambert gallery in New York, San Francisco’s

CCA Wattis Institute and the gallery of Michael Benevento in Los Angeles.

•AttheheartofCellar Door is the notion of an ideal that is always

out of reach.

Do you think Gréaud’s work can ever reach an end-point,

a conclusion?

•Isthisexhibitionexploringthefutureorthepast?

1. The artist’s studio – a dreaming factory

Loris Gréaud and DGZ Research, The Studio

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2. Opera Libretto

The notion of the studio is staged in a number of ways. It is staged as a piece of

musical theatre – and literally as a character within an opera. Gréaud has created

a score for the show, and this is interpreted in various ways, creating a dynamic of

continuous reinterpretation, and of potential.

•Howwouldyoudescribethemoodofthepiece?Isithopeful?

Does the mood change?

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3. Collaborative relationships and cross disciplines

Gréaud’s work is characterised by its engagement with notions of translation and

transformation, and he has created works which engage in a dialogue between

different disciplines (such as art and music), between different registers (such

as the visible and invisible, the microscopic and macroscopic), and between

different dimensions (such as the material and spiritual). He often works

through collaboration, drawing on experts in other disciplines, and his practice is

especially notable for its engagement with science and the esoteric.

• Whatdoyouthinkaretheadvantagesanddisadvantagesof

collaboration in art?

Thanks to:

Bullers Wood School, Hampstead

School, Henry Compton School, The

Institute of Education, King’s College

London, St. Paul’s Academy, St. Paul’s

Way Community School, St. Saviour’s

and St. Olave’s School, Welling School

and Wembley High Technology

College.

Observations and Suggestions:

The cross disciplinary nature of this

exhibition can encourage cross-

curricular activities in schools, for

example between science, maths, art,

music and dance.

The exhibition would work well as a

starting point for discussion about art

and the meaning of art.

The ‘celador’ concept is an excellent

way to communicate the idea that art is

finished by the viewer.

Activitiessuggested:

Test out ways of visually representing

the music which forms part of the

exhibition. How would it feel if you

could touch the sound?

Compare a range of organic forms

and shapes to non- organic forms and

shapes.

Draw an organic form. Draw an

element of pattern behind the organic

form. Add some text to the work and

produce a final piece using mixed

media.

Use of a variety of materials, for

example clay, plastic straws, cotton

wool, shiny black paper, foil, cloth,

wire wool, honey, wax or patterned

card to respond to the exhibition.

Read fairy tales and nursery rhymes

and consider their use of repetition.

Investigate the fantasy genre- Alice

in Wonderland, fantasy films and

computer games.

In the true spirit of collaborative relationships we asked those attending our Teachers Preview event to contribute to this Teachers Pack.

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4. ‘Celador’ Sub-project

Celador is a sweet, which Gréaud has created, and which is available from

a vending machine in the foyer. The sweet has no taste, and the idea is that

whoever eats it has to project a taste onto it.

•Doyouthinkthiscanbeinterpretedasacipherfortheshowas

a whole?

•HowisthisworkareflectiononDuchamp’sbeliefthattheviewer

finishestheworkofart?

www.a-taste-of-illusion.com

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5. Repetition & Doubling

A pronounced theme within Cellar Door is Gréaud’s interest in repetition and

doubling. The three almost identical rooms of the exhibition is a manifestation of

this idea with high-speed automatic doors which act to separate the three rooms.

Part of the opera’s libretto deals with the notion of the multiplication of rooms

Each room also features a wall-mounted text piece rendered from mirrored

lettering and a carpet with a pattern derived in part from architectural geometry

inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s experiments with the geodesic dome and in part

from the co-ordinates of stars.

•WhydoyouthinkthisexhibitionistitledCellar Door: Once is

Always Twice?

•Whatisthesignificanceofusingaconstellationofstarsin

this piece?

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6. The audience

Gréaud has admitted that he has taken inspiration from artist Marcel Duchamp

in his work. Duchamp believed that the viewer finishes the work of art.

•Uponvisitingtheinstallation,howdoyoufeelthestructureschange

your experience?

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7. Big Brother is watching you

•WhatstatementisGréaudmakingbyhisuseofatechnician

controlling the effects in the environment? Does it make you feel

uneasy?

Cellar Door

The title of Cellar Door is inspired by JRR Tolkien’s essay English and Welsh

(1955), in which the author remarked on the pure beauty of the words ‘cellar

door’ when placed together – it has since become a famous example of ‘phono-

aesthetic’ or ‘euphonious’ phrasing.

Activity:

•Thinkaboutwhatwordsyouhaveheardwhosesoundsyoulikeand

don’tlike.Howwouldyoudescribetheuniquecharacteristicsof

these words?

Generate some words and put together a few sentences. Consider each word

individually, write out your selection on a page somewhere, then look at your

answers and try to think out how these might look or sound together. Then go

through it again with a new page and change a few things. See how it changes

and compares to the last page. Try this a few times and get a feel for how the

pieces of language fit together and change the overall picture of a sentence.

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Other Works

Why a Raven is like a Writing Desk

www.friezefoundation.org/images/commissions/Loris_Greaud_

interview.pdf

Eye of the Duck (2005)

Featuring a reading by David Lynch

www.frieze.com/issue/article/loris_greaud

Other Artists

Lewis Carroll

www.topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/lewis_

carroll/index.html?inline=nyt-per

David Lynch

www.movies.nytimes.com/person/100454/David-Lynch?inline=nyt-

per

Stan Brakhage

www.subcin.com/brakhage.htm

William S. Burroughs

www.kirjasto.sci.fi/wbburrou.htm

Buckminster Fuller

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

Pierre Huyghe

www.frieze.com/issue/article/space_explorer

Philippe Parreno

www.airdeparis.com/parreno.htm

Banks Violette

www.frieze.com/issue/review/banks_violette