Computer-controlled mechanised fabric puppets, rope, pulleys, motors, cable, wooden pikes with fabric and plush toys, fabric columns and enclosure5.60 (height) x 15 x 14 m approx.Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris© photo André Morin© Adagp
The Hayward presents the first major UK retrospective of Annette Messager, widely regarded as one of Europe’s most important artists. The exhibition, Annette Messager: The Messengers, traces the development of Messager’s work over the last four decades, from the intimate pieces of the early 1970s to the large and visually stunning installations of the past 15 years, including part of Casino, the Pinocchio-inspired sumptuous red and black silk spectacle for which Messager won the Golden Lion Award at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
Messager takes every day objects and materials such as soft toys, stuffed animals, fabrics, wool, photographs, words and other media and transforms them to create extraordinary artworks. The themes Messager examines are as wide-ranging as the materials she uses; from self-identity, sexuality and the body, to explorations of life and death, good and evil, and human and animal. At times humorous and playful, at times frightening and morbid, her works are characterised by a mixing of differing perspectives, challenging the viewer to look at the world anew and confront the fears and fantasies that lie beneath the surface of daily life. The exhibition was initially shown at the Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2007 where it attracted a record number of visitors and has since travelled to the Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea and the Mori Art Museum in Japan.
Ralph Rugoff, Director of The Hayward, said:
“Annette Messager is one of Europe’s most inventive and compelling artists, and for four decades has been making art that crosses humour and tragedy, toughness and sentiment, magic and everydayness, all in the cause of celebrating the full multiplicity of human nature. I am delighted that The Hayward is presenting the first major retrospective of her work in the UK.”
Messager was the first woman artist to be invited to represent France at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Beginning with her Collection Album series from the early 1970s that conjures up the private rituals developed by women in response to living in a male-dominated culture, the exhibition charts the artist’s ongoing interest in imaginatively exploring self-identity and issues related to how women are represented in our society. The Collection Album series is displayed in ‘The Secret Room of the
Collector’, a room filled with the album collections Messager made while assuming the fictional personae of different female stereotypes, signing her work with identities such as Annette Messager Artist, Annette Messager Trickster and Annette Messager Practical Woman.
One of the characteristic features of Messager’s art is her innovative use of a range of media and materials in a single work. In My Trophies, painting is added to blown-up black and white photographs of parts of the human body, and in My Wishes tiny photographs of body parts are hung by string from the wall to form an elegant votive-like display. The body is omnipresent in Messager’s works and always depicted as fragmented – be it through photographs or in the form of dismembered soft toys – a metaphor for her perception of identity as divided and multifaceted.
Over the last 15 years, Messager’s artistic practice has expanded from two-dimensional works to large-scale installations, many of which have moving elements. Her more recent installations have a theatrical aesthetic, evident in The Hayward exhibition with works such as Articulated-Disarticulated, 2001-2002, which was first shown at Documenta X, and Casino, first shown at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Posing the question of what it means to be human, both in a physical and spiritual sense, Casino firmly establishes Messager’s place as one of the most compelling and prolific artists of our time.
Annette Messager: The Messengers is an international touring exhibition organised by the Centre Pompidou, Paris in collaboration with The Hayward
