Over the past four years or so we have developed a collaborative practice
in the conception and realisation of our work that we find liberating and
interesting. It is an expression of our common interest in ambiguities in
the idea of authorship and expression - having both worked with found
objects and images that allow a degree of distance or role playing in the
making of the work we naturally came to a point where it made sense
to treat our ideas as possibilities to be shared or swapped. In making
our respective work we found that we were posing ourselves a similar
set of questions - can one express something by adopting second-hand
means, how do images ‘make sense', does one make things for someone
else, what are the rules and does one follow rules in breaking them?

Increasingly we are focusing on a certain stupidity in the nature of
our relation to images and objects. We want to work on finding ways
to disturb the comfortable ‘transmitted idea - object/image - recieved
idea' formula, to play with the way that an image can stand in for an
idea. This has led us to look at museum displays and other pedagogic
compositions as well as shop windows and adverts that seem to offer a
model of transparent direct communication - the image or object as an
ambiguous remainder in a process of communication. We are trying to
enhance the inadequacy that we see in all efforts to communicate, in
order to make the encounter with the work more disturbing.

We are also interested in the range of possibilites in the making of
something; the idea of ‘style' and the relationship with materials.
Embracing the badly made, the overworked stating the obvious, slightly
incorrectly, through inadequate means in order to communicate abstract
and difficult concepts - conjuring up the sublime using modelling clay
and pasta. We follow an instinct to make the work when it makes
us laugh, not because we want to make work that is simply funny or
ironic, but because our we treat our laughter as a clue that something
is disturbing.

www.martinandyoule.com 

Les Idées

Exposition personelle à la Station Vastemonde, Saint Brieuc. 19 septembre au 25 octobre.

Civic Sculpture

Ceramics, card, paint, and wood. Exhibited in Dark Pearl at La Générale en Manufacture, Paris, curated by Pilottti

Perspectives

Pasta, pencil, and gouache on board

A Secondary Education

Glazed and unglazed ceramics, board, and fabric.

Natural Education

Images cut out of defaced textbooks, long strings of pasta necklaces - an exhibition at Bast'art in Bratislava, Slovakia exploring language and learning.

Rêve Municipal

A large scale installation assembled from various municipal stocks of objects. Part of the biennale Estuaire Nantes/St.Nazaire 2007 (1 June - 1 September 2007). The project evolved out of a chance visit to the municipal depots of the city of Nantes.

Themes

Exhibition for Charlie's degree show at the Royal College of Art - a selection of work that makes reference to didactic displays, employing hetrogenous forms and styles.

Topics

A set of pieces based on educational displays and materials. Le Goût du Temple, Le Temple du Goût, Nantes, 2007