Laure Prouvost at Rupert

Artist: Laure Prouvost

Exhibition title: Laure Prouvost: Burrow Me

Curated by: Justė Jonutytė

Venue: Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania

Date: July 17 – September 6, 2015

Photography: Arnas Anskaitis, images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Rupert, Vilnius and MOT International London & Brussels

Rupert is delighted to present Burrow Me, Laure Prouvost’s frst solo presentation in the Nordic-Baltic region. In her work, Prouvost constructs immersive environments in which sculptures, videos and installations become central ploys in the re-enactment of unlikely scenarios of spatial and temporal impossibility and absurdity. In her videos, Prouvost employs tropes both derived from and challenging the distinct flmic languages of cinema and art, bringing corrupt reveries to life through humor and mistranslations.

Burrow Me, a 2009 work on view in the show, becomes a central component around which a larger narrative is developed and realized. The work follows the steps of Prouvost’s grandfather, a conceptual artist who went missing some 20 years ago, and for whom the artist has been looking ever since. The exhibition invites us to join Prouvost in her ongoing search for her granddad through a human-sized burrow that has been dug in the green outside Rupert. Utilizing elemental material found in her home and inside the earth, the artist built shovels, which she then used to dig into the ground. Among others, a GPS Shovel, a 4 Step Shovel, a Sexy Shovel, a Reading Shovel and a Drunk Shovel then found themselves digging into city land whilst orienting, satiating, nourishing and intoxicating their digger. When all was done, the earth that had been dug out and the now tired shovels were put to sleep in the gallery, where visitors are invited to partake in the digging.

The exhibition forms the second and fnal part of an ongoing collaboration between Prouvost and Rupert, preceded by an event in the gallery by the artist in the autumn of 2014: an evening of performance, flm screenings and conversation with writer and curator Isla Leaver-Yap.

Laure Prouvost was born in 1952 in Sydwansea. She lives and works between Tokyo and Antwerp. After receiving the Max Mara Prize for Women (2011), Prouvost was the frst French artist to win the prestigious Turner Prize for contemporary artists based in Great Britain.