Curator of the exhibition : Jean-Marie Reynier

In the Middle Ages literature, forest always symbolized changes and human modifications.
Dante Alighieri, in the « Divina Commedia » (Italy 1300) will arrive in the forest, while wandering from the straigh and narrow. Orlando, in the « Orlando Furioso » from Ariosto (Italy 1500), becomes mad in it, while seing his beloved's name carved on a tree with another man's name.
The character from « Castello dei destini incrociati » written by Italo Calvino (Italy 1973), lose there words while passing thru it, they will then find themselves in a castle hall being only able to express themselves with tarot symbols...

Forest in life is this specific area the fills our minds. A place that puts us in the shade, inhabited by extroardinay creatures, and that can make us lose ourselves…
Forest is where one stands when one decide to change one's way, to follow the hardest path, the one that goes up and not the one going down. It is where one stands when one choses for one's good, and as a result for the good of the beloved ones.

A forest of symbols, this is obvious in the aboriginal paintings presented here. And the signs are not necessarely the ones we think of.
It would be too easy to come into the aboriginal language having in mind the western artworks only. This would lead us in the gesture interpretation solelys, leaving aside the power of significant.
While watching an Aurstralian painting, one is tensed as one can hardly confront its appearance to what we know at first.

Let's change our perspective.
Let's talk literature.
Each painting tells a story, just as a in a fairy tale and as such it is not necessarely painted but rather told.
Telling... Not specifically stating, neither communicating but telling: this word guides us in a forest situated just in front of the Hell's doors.

We are now back to the Divine Comedy from Dante Alighieri, and his journey through time, into spirals and verticals. This classical text is the perfect example of the mythological expression of this specific time, the so called "spoken time" (solely as this is the first text in the Italian history that is written in simple language and not in latin).

Dante is lost in his own life (nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…), he meets Virgile who takes him by the hand and guides him through metaphysical discovery. In this journey, from Hell to Heaven, Dante goes down into spiral bosoms created by Lucifer's fall then climbs up the Purgatory mountain to go up in Heaven and come back on earth changed.
During his Odessey, he comes across a multitude of people, damned, blesses, awaiting... multitude of life stories and an immensity of significants.
Each of these meeting is a literary point in the narration but moreover a physical point in human History; a sin, a merit, a part of one's life and the world's life.
This narrative develops into several songs that each tells about a specific part of human being and of history. Dante travels in spirals to come down to Lucifer, climbs back up in spirals in the Purgatory and travels in the circles of Paradise…

We find ourselves in an open and unexpected ling to aboriginal art. Where are these dots, lines and circles from if not from a territorial responsibility that suggest to it's holders the need of telling such an ancient story that it becomes contemporary and universal ?

Ada Bird Petyarre's paintings, when exhibited laying on the floor suggest facts as well as narrative superposition…
A simple dot now becomes a cartography of points, in depth, in weightlessness...
Avoid falling in the "sexy" part of the colour, to appreciate what comes from down below and the floor becomes slippery... Don't lose contact with the ground as it could make us fall far lower then itself...

We now face this territorial responsibility as I spoke above, it has been moved in our territories, the mental ones, the metaphysical ones, the memory ones...
We only need to find one's guides, one's Virgile to begin this journey...
One's travelling mates...
One's fortune storyteller...
One's memories...
One's places.

Jean-Marie Reynier (Marseille 1983, lives and work in Essertines-sur-Rolle), he is artist and curator and I.C.O.M. Member (International Council of Museums, UNESCO)
Educated from taille-douce and media sociology, he now brings to its end his thesis on "Paris Hilto and liquid modernity" at the Geneva University for his studies in C.C.C. (study program in Critical, Curatorial, Cybermedia). He is independant curator for several places and galleries in Switzerland as well as director of the « I Sotterranei dell’Arte » in Bellinzona.
As consultant and curator for the Notari editions in Geneva he invented among others the « Qu’Art est » collection publishing J. Chessex, M. Müller, J. Roman, L. Carroll…
He contributed to international projects with the F.R.A.C. Auvergne, the Zurich Shedhalle, the Swiss Culture Center from Rome and regularly collaborated with the Contemporary Art Journals.
As an artist, following several exhibitions in solo, he now exclusively collaborates with his companion Andréanne Oberson, with whome he created the "Collectif Indigène" that regularly exhibits in Switzerland and Europe.
He assures leading en examplary life.