INTERVIEW: LAURENCE BRIAT
I am fascinated by the unpredictable construction of images, amazed by what is often born of disorder, of chance. I like its spontaneous, recreational side.
Could you please introduce yourself a little? Where did you grow up and how did you become interested in art?
My name is Laurence Briat. I was lucky enough to grow up in the south of France, near the Mediterranean Sea. I never wanted to leave this region and its beautiful light, and I still live there.
My interest in art dates back to the "seventies", when I started studying at the Beaux-Arts (university) in Marseille, which I stopped after three years. It was a time of a lot of influences, and it took time to find my way. In retrospect, I think that it is mainly books and encounters with artist friends that have always fuelled my interest in art and in the plastic arts in particular. It's a passion that leads to long periods of seclusion in the studio, and I savour them, but I also like to share it, especially when I run workshops.
What ignited your interest in collage work in particular?
Collage satisfies my taste for the fragmented, mixtures, blends, reclaiming, recycling... I am fascinated by the unpredictable construction of images, amazed by what is often born of disorder, of chance. I like its spontaneous, recreational side. It’s a vast area of freedom that has become essential to me. It's my favourite game!
The abundance of usable elements available is for me a source of infinite inspiration.
Do you make any other kind of art?
I have been interested in many areas of the visual arts.
I have practiced forms as diverse as Chinese calligraphy, nude drawing, painting on large formats, and multiple engraving techniques. I have never managed to choose or focus on a single one, and I remain engaged simultaneously, and in cycles, in a certain number of mediums. My different practices feed on each other. At the moment I am working on photogravure based on my photomontages. This work is close to the creative process of collage.
How would you describe your work and style in your own words?
My work always tells the same story: a story of humans, of fragile presences. It is about disappearance, the passage of time, memory, uncertainty ... all these subjects are at the heart of my concerns. I try to treat them with distance, grace and sometimes irony.
It is daily, impulsive, compulsive work.
My approach is intuitive, and I let myself be guided by curiosity. I always like to find new forms for my collages. This leads me to all kinds of experiments, like mixing analog and digital, including pieces of paintings or engravings, etc.
My artistic signature is marked by rigorous cropping, cuts, interruptions, gaps. These segmented images respond to a desire for simplification. I always try to express more with less.
I love the way you use colour in your work. Minimal but bold. How did this way of working develop?
Through the practice of painting I have no doubt developed a personal idea of colour. It is true that I attach great importance to it but also to light. I often contrast the faded tones of the papers I use with very bright colours.
Do you choose colour intuitively or more consciously?
I go towards what attracts me. I think I intuitively choose colour according to the feelings that emerges from the images. I am always attentive to contrasts, for example between the softness of colours and the radical and violent cuts in an image.
How do you feel when you deconstruct a book?
I have this urge to destroy, to tear apart ... a kind of transgression ... but I only use abandoned, discarded papers, and only to rebuild.
What I especially like about collage is giving new meaning and new life to something obsolete, residual, saving it from destruction... at least for a while.
Do you feel responsible for the images you work with or create? How you dismantle figures and rearrange bodies or faces?
At the beginning I work without preconceived idea, I leave everything to the unconscious. Later I of course look at what the image I have in front of me expresses, and take responsibility for it. I have to own the meaning that emerges from it. However, the construction of my images does not impose only one reading because I only give partial visions, primers of narration. I am frequently surprised when people tell me about their own interpretations, which are often influenced by their own intimate memories. From that point on, my responsibility diminishes.
I went through a lot of your work, and even though there is a lot of older imagery, you also work with contemporary material. Do you have any preference? How do you choose the imagery you work with?
From my first collages on, I used discarded paper, old handwritten letters, images from old magazines, old amateurs photos. Vintage elements attract me for the quality of their material, their texture, their alterations, and the particular feeling they give off.
Later on, my sources widened more and more. Today I use whatever I like and come across: I like to bring disparate elements together, to create tension.
What interests me most is to play with temporality by mixing fragments from different eras in the same collage. Thus past and present collide and merge and this creates questions and ambiguities. So putting a contemporary element onto an old photograph, I love that!
Your collages feature predominantly female characters. Would you consider yourself a feminist artist?
It's true that femininity is dominant in my collages, and that the masculine appears only on the side... However, I do not consider myself a feminist artist, although I am absolutely in solidarity with the women's movement.
Who are some of your favourite collage artists?
The pioneers of course, Kurt Schwitters, Rauschenberg, Richard Hamilton, poster artists like Jacques Villeglé. So many others… the sensitive collages of Katrien de Blauwer.
But if I had to name just one, it would be John Stezaker. I was shocked when I discovered him! It was from this moment on that I dared to cut images radically. He opened this path for me, showed me another way of relating to images, gave me the audacity to appropriate them and really changed my gaze. His images are so powerful... and on top of that I really like the aesthetics of the fifties!
My recent presence on Instagram has already made me discover talented collagists whose work interests me a lot. But I have so many favourites that I can't name them for fear of forgetting half of them.
Laurence Briat web IG
interview Petra Zehner
first published on Glacial Collective Prose, our old online magazine, on April 25, 2020