An artist from La Manche, France, the Magdalen Islands’ partner region*, Jane Motin focuses on the body and the environment to create works in situ. The artist works through walking, gesture and performance to gather information and draw forms that embody these samples. She favours local, natural materials. Her artistic practice is concerned with the present, repeating a gesture, a posture that stops a moment.
walk, gather, connect
Establishing her studio at La Petite Saline in Havre-Aubert and her field of exploration on the Butte des Demoiselles and its surroundings, Jane Motin forsees her contribution to Songlines in continuity with her previous projects. The artist, who maintains a relationship with Japan, where she has stayed many times, has developed from coast to coast, from France to Japan, a series of works that reflects the shaping of human bonds. She has also developed a series of artistic interventions, together with a hike, around her grandfather’s exodus notebook from the end of the World War II. In a spirit of travel and intimate discovery, Motin sees her inaugural gestures for Songlines in this way: “gather, pick up, bring back pieces of landscape, orientate, manipulate, connect and engage them, with the intention [and this is what particularly interests us] that they express their own energy.”
Since 2006, Jane Motin has regularly exhibited the results of her work, while at the same time embarking upon multiple research residencies. Born in 1979 and based in Saint-Lô, she graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts de Caen in 2000, where she studied under Marc Couturier and Ange Leccia. She subsequently continued her training in Japan, and returns there frequently. Motin is attached to art’s metaphorical value. She diverts the brutality of facts, adding to them a form of poetry. Whether in the context of the exhibition or of action, the artist appeals both to individual and collective memory, drawing us toward “being together” in the present. She advances art that is accessible, tangible as the landscape.
* In 1993, the regional county municipality of the Magdalen Islands signed a partnership agreement with the Conseil général of La Manche, the Musée de Tatihou and the Musée de la Mer focusing on cultural exchanges, development of partnerships, and sharing expertise. Despite the great geographical distance, in their respective maritime experiences the two territories have much in common. It is in this context that we invited artist Jane Motin to join Songlines.
Songlines 