Correspondances: Pierrick Mouton & Sister Germaine

Correspondances is an exhibition of work by French east London based artist Pierrick Mouton and that draws from his relationship with French-Cameroonian Protestant nun, Sister Germaine at the Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts from 17th July – 27th September 2015.
Nunnery Gallery presents Pierrick Mouton’s Correspondances, curated by Edward Ball, an exhibition of emails, letters, photographs, video diaries and films, between the artist and Sister Germaine spanning over five years of correspondence between the artist and Sister Germaine.
What began as a project to document the daily life in a convent in Versaille lifestyle soon changed as Pierrick’s Mouton’s relationship with Sister Germaine developed and he became interested in documenting and understanding more of Germaine’s life. In turn Germaine’s intrigue with the project and the camera grew as she became fascinated with how to record her own daily life.
Mouton enters into a dialogue with a nun who has had little experience with cameras or technology and sets about giving her the skills and tools to make video diaries and record her own life in the convent. Included in the exhibition is a touching film made by Sister Germaine showing the lives of the nuns and a collection of her photographs.
Underpinning the whole project is the intimacy of dialogue and correspondence: between two humans getting to know one another and between two different film aesthetics and two different perspectives. The main exchange between Mouton and Germaine is the camera, which shows their shifting relationships between artist and muse, filmmaker and filmed subject. Correspondances forms part of Bow Arts’ twentieth anniversary programme In Dialogue: a series of exhibitions concerned with the complex relationships between artist and the muse.
In celebration of Bow Arts’ role at the heart of the bustling Bow Road community, Mouton was commissioned in 2014 to carry out a year-long documentary residency in the community leading up to the exhibition, which will be viewed at a special screening in September 2015.
During Pierrick’s Mouton’s residency and working with religious leaders in Bow, east London, Mouton has made three gentle portraits of the spiritual lives of a Sikh, Church of England and Methodist minister, thereby gaining deeper understanding of the common threads of spiritual life, irrespective of faith group.  
Pierrick Mouton is a French artist and filmmaker living and working in East London. His filmmaking practice, characterised by an interest in the documentary form and a long term approach and a close engagement with localities and subjects, is primarily concerned with making explicit the roles of the subject and the author. His work encompasses photography, video installation and object-based practice as part of his research.
His long term project, Correspondances, (2008-2015) is presented as an exhibition for the first time in the UK at Nunnery Gallery. Mouton has recently exhibited at Espace Croisé, Roubaix and at the French Institute of Skopje, Macedonia. He has screened his films as part of the Saison Vidéo of the Région Nord-Pas de Calais, and Soirée Flare at Languedoc-Roussillon Cinéma.
#Correspondances