Nadège Mériau

FT13 Artists on a week residency at The Royal Standard Project Space,Liverpool.

PRIVATE VIEW 31st May 6-9pm
Viewing Saturday 12-5pm
www.the-royal-standard.com
www.florencetrust.org

SPUD is a new project organised by Deirdre O’Mahony in collaboration with X-PO and with artists Frances Whitehead, Chicago, Nadege Meriau, London and Grizedale Arts, Cumbria.
SPUD provides a metaphorical space for an investigation and reflection on sustainability, food security, changing landscapes and rural/urban relationships. It is a transdisciplinary project involving farmers and artists and will use a mix of documentary film, exhibitions, photography and archival processes to make visible the relevance of rural tacit cultivation knowledge to urban publics today. The process of growing cultivating and harvesting the potatoes in County Clare provides the model for sites in Chicago, London and Cumbria.

Work published along poetry, literature and essays in current issues of GRANTA ( UK), BJP (UK), ABRIDGED ( Ireland), EXERPT MAGAZINE (Australia) and GUP MAGAZINE( Holland) :
http://www.granta.com/Archive/122
http://abridgedonline.com/wp-content/upl…
http://excerptmagazine.com
http://gupmagazine.com

9th-31st March 2013
Curated by Yves Bres

Au Centre de la Terre, Centre des Expositions Paul Courboulay,Le Mans.

http://www.photographiques.org

14-23 March 2013
Dyson Gallery, Battersea Campus,Royal College of Art, London.

www.rca.ac.uk/secret
http://www.fadwebsite.com/2013/03/12/rca…

Opening Hours 12-6pm
www.florencetrust.org

30 Maple Street London W1



Artists selected:

Fatma Bucak, Maarten van den Bos, Molly Clare O’Donnell, Nicolas Feldmeyer, Dominic Harris, Hirofumi Isoya, Jamie Lau, Nadege Meriau, Andrea C Morley, Atsuko Nakamura, Sarah Pager, Jess Piddock, Fabio Romano, James Smith, Inbal Strauss, Poppy Whatmore, David Ben White.

Academy Now is an independent annual survey of students recently graduated in fine art to offer them an opportunity to be seen in a non commercial environment following the completion of their art degree.
What differentiates Academy Now from the existing mentoring exhibitions and awards, is that by selecting artists from the UK and other European art colleges, it activates stimulating dialogues between the art capitals offering to the students the opportunity to establish and develop relationships beyond the UK.
Academy Now 2012 in its first edition, includes 17 artists selected in the past 2 years: they represent varied nationality, from the UK, Europe, Middle and Far East.
The 17 artists have been invited to respond to the venue that will host the exhibition: a skeleton of a 1930s six floor building in Fitzrovia where installation, photography, video, painting and sculpture will be displayed for one week only. The building will soon become the headquarter of Heashin Kwak, curator and gallerist, founder of Hanmi Gallery who has generously provided academy noW 2012 with spectacular premises.
At the end of the exhibition an artist will be nominated by the committee members and will be awarded with the Damiani/academy noW Prize consisting in a monographic publication.
Academy Now 2012’s catalogue will be available at the end of the exhibition.

Committee members:

David Bate, photographer and writer.
Ruth Dupre, artist and lecturer at Camberwell and the Royal College of Art.
Dr Silvia Evangelisti, Bologna Art Fair’s director and professor of Art Theory, University of Bologna
Dr Małgorzata Ludwisiak, Deputy director of the Muzeum Sztuki, curator and writer.
Laura Petrillo, Academy Now founder, IKT independent curator, Liechtenstain and lecturer, Bologna.
Ian Rosenfeld, gallery founder and curator, Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery, London.
Dr Margerita Sprio, writer and professor of Film Theory at Westminster University.

www.academynow.org
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a…

My work has recently been published on various blogs, newspapers and magazines including It's Nice That, Junk Culture, Gault & Millau, Blend and The Huffington Post. I'm especially pleased with the review of Global Feast in the newly launched Journal of Wild Culture
http://www.wildculture.com/article/globa…
and the article in Spanish newspaper 20 minutos http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1672844/…

Ends 11th of January
http://www.ilanengelgallery.com/

Exhibiting Artists - Stephan Crasneanscki, Anne-Sophie Emard, Catherine Gfeller
Rinko Kawauchi, Abbas Kiarostami, Nadège Meriau, Samuel Rousseau, Mike and Doug Starn






And while you're in Le Marais, you can also pop in Maria Lund,
Odile Ouizeman, Danielle Fiat, Galerie Perrotin and Suzanne Trasieve Paris.

Solanum Tuberosum, 2010-2012, in Fairgreen Gallery, Galway

http://www.culturefox.ie/festival/tulca-…

"WE IRISH probably feel we know our way round a potato. Boiled, baked, roasted, mashed or fried, we’ve gazed upon the trusty spud in pretty much all its forms.
However, French photographic artist Nadege Meriau, whose work is showing in the Fairgreen Gallery as part of TULCA, portrays the potato in ways seldom seen before. Against dark backgrounds and with dramatic lighting, Meriau’s images of sprouting potatoes are other-worldly, mysterious and visually arresting. Several look like stills from a science fiction movie with alien-looking potatoes posed against what appears to be a starry night sky" Charlie Mc Bride, Galway Advertiser, November 15, 2012.


I really enjoyed my time in Galway and particularly liked the works of Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly,David Heffer, Patrick Hogan,Joanna Karolini, Emily Richardson,Kelly Richardson, Daniel Steiffert and Brigitte Zieger.
For more on Tulca's programme http://issuu.com/aidenk47/docs/tulca_201…

I'm delighted to have been nominated for the Still Life Photography Fellowship alongside Darren Harvey-Reagan and Eugenia Ivanissevich.
http://www.artsfoundation.co.uk/awards/2…

Judges for the Still Photography category are Michael Mack, Publisher Steidl/Mack
Helen Sear, Artist and Sue Steward, Curator and writer.

15th-30th September 2012
http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/re…

Exhibiting artists: Brendan Baker & Daniel Evans, Alison Bettles, Anders Birger, David Birkin, Jonny Briggs, Emma Critchley, Helen Goodin, Paula Gortázar, Maria Gruzdeva, Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir, Gemma Marmalade, Marianne McGurk, Nadège Mériau, Vilma Pimenoff, Minna Pöllänen, Martin Seeds, Chloe Sells, Alison Stolwood, Elisavet Tamouridou, Helen Thompson, SeoYeoung Won

Curator Karen Mc Quain in Dazed Magazine:
"I have been curating this show for the last five years and for me the biggest challenge has always been finding a way for many styles of work and modes of display to feel coherent in one exhibition. Trying to find the correct pacing of projects, allowing each work some space to breath, and making the right selection of works to ensure the audience gets a strong sense of each overall project within the edit. Our newly renovated building boasts bigger galleries and higher ceilings, it will certainly be exciting to utilise them to their full potential this year. Although challenging the variety of approaches to photography in the exhibition is what our visitors really respond to. It’s why the show is such a great testament to the many different directions in which photography can be pushed."
http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/…



This year's judges were: Bridget Coaker, Night Picture Editor, The Guardian and co-founder of Troika Editions; Anthony Luvera, artist, writer and lecturer, Karen Newman, Curator, Open Eye Gallery and Brett Rogers, Director, The Photographers' Gallery.

"Perhaps the most surprising work, though, belonged to Nadège Mériau, a Tunisian-born photographer living in London. Her visionary landscapes resemble the apocalyptic paintings of John Martin or those disturbingly viscous medical images taken by tiny cameras inserted into the body. They are actually extreme close-ups of the inside of bread, taken on a large-format camera: a kind of worm's-eye view of buns, rolls and loaves. Mériau also photographs the inside of vegetables and milk with the same surreal sci-fi results. Her "intra-uterine architectures", as she calls them, are utterly singular and a little bit bonkers, but they captivate all the same" Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 8-7-12
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2…



"I very much like Nadège Mériau’s beautifully made close-ups of plain foods lit so that they are only just readable as food. She can make the doughy inside of a loaf of bread into a night sky or an underground cavern or a flow of lava. This is a big contrast to the work of those examining land for traces of what went before. Mériau does the other thing photography has always been able to do, to look at something which meant nothing at all, and invite us to give it meaning."Francis Hodgson, The Financial Times, 13-7-12
http://francishodgson.com/2012/07/13/eva…

"J'ai longtemps hésité devant le travail de la Carthaginoise londonienne Nadège Mériau, photographe de nourriture. Il ne s'agit pas de la pathologie des dîneurs photographes compulsifs, ni de ce festival, ou, pire, des images bien léchées et mièvres de 'photographes plasticiens' mondains photographiant joliment la 'sublime, forcément sublime' cuisine d'un grand chef. Non, Nadège Mériau photographie vraiment la bouffe, de tout près, ses filaments, ses gruaux, ses adhérences, sa pesanteur, sa matérialité : c'est intime, viscéral, muqueux, intra-utérin comme elle dit, ça ne met guère en appétit, certes, mais c'est superbe, mystérieux, dans une double pulsion de dégoût et de fascination, de contemplation et de curiosité (est-ce un potiron, là ? devrais-je en parler à mon psy ?). À suivre." Marc Lenot,Lunettes Rouges, Le Monde, 30-7-12
http://lunettesrouges.blog.lemonde.fr/20…

"Mériau’s interest in our conscious and subconscious notions of dwellings, home and Eden seeks answers in unexpected places. The surreal, visceral landscapes are actually large format photographs of various foods, the lens exploring nether regions we do not think of as possible terrains. The meta typographies of these minute worlds somehow makes us more conscious of our own smallness in the universe. The alien visions are both repulsive and inviting, making the invisible something infinite."Posi+tive Magazine, 12-7-12
http://www.positive-magazine.com/photogr…

"Un dernier arrêt aux créations de Nadège Mériau, Française vivant à Londres, qui fait de l'intérieur d'un pain, d'une courge ou d'une pastèque des paysages oniriques, organiques voire galactiques, véritable vision de l'infini pris au coeur de l'insignifiance." Karveelt, Karveelt in Wonderland, 9.8.12
http://karveelt-in-wonderland.over-blog.…

"Nadège Mériau : voyage dans les entrailles de la matière
Française, vivant et travaillant à Londres, diplômée du Royal College of Art, Nadège Mériau nous fait partager un univers étrange naviguant entre viscéral et sublime. A travers ses photos, l’artiste nous plonge dans les entrailles d’aliments tels que le pain, la pastèque, la courge… L’effet est surprenant, les légumes se transforment en des lieux souterrains, des paysages imaginaires emprunts d’étrangeté. L’éclairage et la photographie grand format subliment les aliments, pour les rendre méconnaissables. L’intérieur d’une pastèque se transforme alors en une grotte sanguinolente, la courge devient une cavité ocre à ciel ouvert dont les filaments deviennent des lianes…" Margaux Buyck, The Artship, 24.8.12
http://theartship.it/home/dlyaivxy/publi…

20th July-15th August 2012
Curator Isabel de Vasconcellos selected four recent works to be exhibited in the Old Stratford Town Hall as part of GLOBAL FEAST during the Olympics 2012.




"Global Feast is an unforgettable dining experience – a journey through the best of world food, enwrapped by its contours.The centrepiece of the event is Worldscape (atmos), a giant sculptural model of the world 15-metres long, 6 metres wide and over 2 metres tall – an installation doubling as both table and seating.Each of 20 successive evenings during the London Olympics, up to 80 guests gather at the Old Town Hall in Stratford – the closest venue to the Olympic Park - to travel through the cultures and cuisines of the entire world. Each guest dines in a unique part of the sculptural space - sitting on its oceans, dining off its coastlines, illuminated by its cities, enshadowed by its mountains."

I've been selected as one of the Florence Trust artists 2012-2013.
The residency starts in August 2012 and will culminate in a curated group show and catalogue in July 2013.
For more information on the residency go to http://www.florencetrust.org

"Nadège Meriau uses the camera to look into edible things. Here photography constructs imaginary and viscous landscapes. Her point of view is that of the worm, getting into matter. She uses a large format camera to get into the porosity of bread and vegetables. Yet, here, closeness produces distant landscapes that are purely photographic. Her approach reminds us of Gustave Flaubert’s comment on seeing: that the short sighted are the ones who see best because they put their nose into the core of things." Olivier Richon, nominator and head of photography at the Royal College of Art, London.

En tant que photographe nominee pour le Prix Decouverte 2012, je presenterai douze photographies a l'Atelier de Mecanique dans le cadre d'une exposition personnelle avec le soutien genereux de la Fondation Luma.
Le vernissage de l'exposition prendra place le 2 Juillet lors du programme d'inauguration des Rencontres d'Arles 2012.
Je participerai egalement a la visite guidee de l'Atelier de Mecanique et a une projection nocturne au Theatre Antique le 5 Juillet.
http://www.rencontres-arles.com/A11/C.as…

My solo show at L'Atelier de Mecanique opens on Monday the 2nd of July as part of the opening program of the Arles Photography Festival.
As one of the nominees for this year's Discovery Award I will be showing twelve photographic works at Le parc des Ateliers with the generous support of the Luma Foundation.
Other related events include a guided tour of the exhibitions at l'Atelier de Mecanique and a screening evening on the 5th of July.
http://www.rencontres-arles.com/A11/C.as…

http://www.photo-soup.org/exhibitions/ph…

Camouflage works on show at Unit 24 Gallery

http://www.zeitgeistartsprojects.com/exh…
Interview with curators in SLAM issue 11 http://www.southlondonartmap.com/magazin…

curated by Olivier Richon.
Artists including Anne Kathrin Schumann,Nadege Meriau, Olivier Richon.



November Article: http://www.contacteditions.co.uk/nadege-…

Exhibiting Artists; Alexander Nicolas Gehring, Steffi Klenz, Jessica Mallock, Nadege Meriau, Pedro Ramos, Preston is my Paris, Tom Saunderson, Daniel Stier and Casey Wilson.

http://redeye.org.uk/exhibition/brighton…

As one of the Brighton Open'11 selected artist, I enjoyed contributing to the exhibition library by recommending books closely linked to my practice such as 'The Spell of The Sensuous' by David Abrams, 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' by Jules Verne and "The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms" by Darwin.
I enjoyed co-leading the Graduate Crit http://www.photofringe.org/?p=2864
and participating in the Wandering Bears Residency http://www.wanderingbears.co.uk/?s=Nadeg…


The show was partly sponsored by Metro Imaging who mounted my Solanum Tuberosum work.
http://www.metro-print.co.uk/Metroprints…

Honourable Mention Award

http://sustain.rca.ac.uk/Sustain-Show-Aw…

SHORTLISTED FOR HIJACKED 3 by Louise Clement and Mark McPherson
http://bigcitypress.blogspot.com/2011/09…

Artists Greta Alfaro, Marie Angeletti, Jonny Briggs, Nadege Meriau, Anne Kathrin Schuhmann, Hitomi Kai Yoda.

"This annual selection of the work of six graduates from the Royal College of Art, chosen with the help of the Senior Photography Curator at the V&A, offers an impressive and varied display(...) Nadege Meriau lights the interior of a loaf of bread so that it resembles the apocalyptic sky of a Baroque battle painting"
The Week, 20th August 2011

Exhibition curated by Nick Kaplony
Artists Marta Bakst, Jyll Bradley, Thom Bridge, Laura Eldret, Nick Kaplony, Nadège Mériau, Helen Pynor, Eva Stenram,
Clare Strand, Karen Stripp, Alexa Wright, Renhui Zhao

http://coregallery.co.uk/trick-of-the-li…



"Trick of The Light is an exhibition of work by artists who use the particularities of the photographic medium to unsettle or confuse the viewer. It takes its title from a term used to describe the phenomenon where particular environmental conditions lead to the perception of an optical illusion or the seemingly impossible.

As something historically used to document reality the photograph has associations of veracity. Well used terms such as ‘photographic evidence’ and the saying ‘the camera never lies’ are testament to this. While the arrival of digital technology and its potential for manipulation has undoubtedly shaken our belief in the photographic image, even since its advent, the medium has been subverted to throw into question established notions of the world around us. Be this through deliberate deception or as a result of misinterpretation due to the ambiguities of the medium. The artists in this exhibition exploit a broad range of tools available to them, playing with perspective, scale, digital sleight of hand or light itself to engage us by making us question what we see.

Core Gallery itself is an artist led space with a dynamic exhibition programme, which offers the opportunity for invited artists and curators to challenge and explore their own practices. Putting the freshest work from both local and international art spheres on public display, Core Gallery intends to develop the strengths of the existing arts sector in Deptford, by expanding its borders and bringing a wealth of talent and diversity to the Deptford scene."
Nick Kaplony, July 2011

Press: http://www.troikaeditions.co.uk/troikata…
http://artcritiqued.com/2011/07/05/world…
“Nadege Meriau's work catches you on an immediate elemental visceral level and pulls you in (...) Suddenly you are looking at pictures that are dealing with the creation of the world. Fire, ice, rivers of magma, rivers of blood, light, darkness, a riot of colour, a journey to the center of the earth.Stepping forward it becomes clear that this is photography not painting, and seconds later the realization that these are not otherworldly subterranean landscapes but intriguing photographs of cleverly manipulated bread and fruit. This spins you off into seeing bread as truly the stuff of life. These pieces show a willingness to grapple with the big issues while maintaining a very healthy sense of exploration.”Gareth Harris.


Harcover,"The first publication of the current photographic and moving image practices of young artists who graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2011"
http://blackdogonline.com/all-books/hard…

My contribution on p74, 75,76 and 77.

Artists Helen Cammock, Rebecca Court, Emma Critchley, Valerie Furnham, Nadege Meriau

http://www.photofringe.org/?p=400



CAMOUFLAGE, 2008-2009.

My Camouflage works explores the need for a secret hiding place, a space of comfort and safety we can retreat to and gather ourselves.
Cryptic coloration is one of nature’s survival mechanisms, a widespread strategy for predatory or protective behaviour used by animals to hunt or hide.
In human terms, camouflage evokes the boundary between the visible and the invisible, the public and the private, culture and nature.
I am interested in revisiting mankind’s traditional use of camouflage as military and hunting aid as it seems to epitomise the way our society appropriates and consumes nature, often through mimicry.
In the photographs it is not clear if the human figures are predator or prey. The series also points to the predatory aspect of looking and the connections between photography, mimesis and trickery.

Exhibition and Festival curated by Louise Clement

http://archive09.formatfestival.com/expo…

Exhibition curated by Day& Gluckman
Artists Leonora Chan, Helena Goldwater, Andy Harper, Nadege Meriau, Melanie
Stildoph and John Timberlake.

http://www.dayandgluckman.co.uk/curious_…

Press: http://www.artcornwall.org/exhibitions/c…

Exhibition curated by Silvia B
Artists including Charlotte Dumas, Risk Hazekamp, Alexander Mc Queen and Koen Hauser.

“Nadege Meriau’s intriguing photographs bring to mind film rather than the still image. Like David Lynch’s warped vision from the edges of the psyche, they conflate the familiar with the unexpected, even unsettling, to create a dream world where, despite everything seeming right, it is actually all wrong. Drawing on our subconscious imagination, they conjure the apparently impossible with a magician’s sleight of hand, like Elsie Wright and Francis Griffith’s fairies at the bottom of their Cottingley garden.”
Greg Hobson, National Media Museum, 2008


Drawing on psychoanalysis and surrealism my earlier series Mise en Scene depicts the house as a psychically charged space. It is the home of fairy tales where animals symbolise human phobias, obsessions and repressed desires, where mysterious rituals take place behind closed doors.
The photographs are ambiguous narratives where innocence meets darkness, humour borders on the absurd and beauty is tinted with menace.
Some images have been carefully staged with the help of animal handlers.
However unexpected the scenes may be they were all enacted for real, with live animals leaving the outcome of the work less controllable and allowing ‘natural’ behaviour to become part of the underlying narrative.
The series also explores the boundary between image and reality through trompe l’oeil scenarios where wallpapers, murals and fabric patterns enter a dialogue with main foreground subjects.
Representations of the natural world in the domestic and urban environment are examined and juxtaposed with live beings and vegetation so as to bring out the underlying tensions between the imaginary and the real.










SCHWEPPES PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT PRIZE 2005

“There are many arresting images in this third year of the Schweppes Portrait Prize. Not least among them is Nadege Meriau’s portrait of Maya (pictured), an image that fronts the publicity for this annual award.
In it, the young girl holds what we assume is a pet rabbit (which was, in fact, hired for the shoot) tightly to her chest as she crouches in the corner of a garden. She wears the slightly unsettling, penetrating gaze of a child, yet the physical awkwardness of adolescence is just beginning to creep in.”
Fisun Guner, Art Review, Metro, 2005