1 Brochure de l’exposition Claude Viallat, 1974. Saint-Étienne : musée d’art et d’industrie, p. 29.
2 Voir par exemple la baleine Skyscraper (The Bruges Whale) réalisée avec 5 tonnes de macro-déchets plastiques, une installation conçue par StudioKCA pour la Triennale Bruges 2018.
3 Extrait des panneaux d’exposition, Annette Messager, rétrospective au musée d’art contemporain (MCA), Sydney, 2014.
4 Extrait du communiqué de presse, Yriam Perez. Transparence Textile, 2018, rédigé par l’Espace Meyer Zafra.
5 Exposition Nous les Arbres, 12 juillet 2019 au 5 janvier 2020, Fondation Cartier, Paris.
6 Le court documentaire The Mystery of Flying Kicks (Le mystère des pompes volantes) illustre la pluralité des significations qui sont attribuées au lancer de chaussures : marquage d’un territoire (de gangs à New York), hommage (à une personne assassinée à Los Angeles) ou encore technique de drague ou signe d’une virginité perdue (à Sydney). Pour d’autres encore, c’est « un signe de déclin, de désolation urbaine, un indice disant que quelque chose est en train de s’effondrer, ou ne tourne pas rond. Et ça peut se comprendre : c’est une inversion de l’ordre naturel ». Voir Matthew Bate, The Mystery of Flying Kicks, 2010, Viron Papadopoulos, 14 min.
7 Présentation en ligne de l’exposition Nous les Arbres, https://www.fondationcartier.com/expositions/nous-les-arbres/les-artistes-de-lexposition
8 Source : panneau d’exposition, Fendre l’air, Musée du quai Branly, 2019.
9 « Mavis Ngallametta and Doreen Marpoondin applied the traditional techniques used with natural plant materials to the ghost nets. Their traditional baskets are fine and delicate but when using net the baskets they produced were knotted and lumpy. The weavers struggled with the material, initially unhappy with the untidiness, but as the baskets grew they began to develop a fondness for the ghost net and excitement over these new strange objects they were making. »
10 « If it’s in your hand, if you feel it’s not right, you imagine your grand-mother watching you. She taught me once, showed it once and then I had to do. She would not explain with words. I had to watch and learn. »
11 « Marion [Gaemers] taught us blanket stitch; but you know when I did it, it made me think back how my mum taught me how to stitch clothes ; and also embroidery and crochet. »
12 « My mum used to weave, to maintain the houses which were made from woven coconut. I learned by watching, sitting next to her. When we had sports at school we had to weave baskets for fishing too. I learnt from watching, sitting next to her and copying ». Source : biographie de l’artiste Angela Torenbeek éditée et diffusée par le Centre d’art de Moa Island.
13 « Shetlanders used some synthetic ropes in their baskets in the period just before their basket tradition died (1960’s) but mainly it was agricultural rope. There may be lots of artists using these nets but I don’t look for them. »
14 « Technically there is no difference between using natural fibres and synthetic fibres at all. »
15 « fishing line is quite hard to work with, it’s very… it’s not as forgiving as fibers. »
16 « This is a very interesting question because I don’t really find any differences except that the end product will last a lot longer and I can use heat to melt synthetic fibres. Plant fibres require different techniques for each type of plant. Making a woven willow basket requires totally different techniques to making a coiled grass basket and in this case making a basket from ghost ropes is more similar to working with grass than to working with willow. »
17 En Australie, le titre de « Trésors nationaux vivants australiens » est attribué à des personnes qui ont apporté une contribution exceptionnelle à la société australienne dans tous les domaines de l’activité humaine ; il se distingue du titre japonais qui désigne les personnes certifiées conservateurs de biens culturels immatériels d’importance.
18 Le nœud de paille « joint deux sections de manière sûre sans aucun risque de glissement par la suite » (Ripault 2000 : 160).
19 Extrait de son site internet, https://www.oceanejacob.com/lartiste
20 « The Queen fish, I can recognize it as a queen fish, because of its shape, the red eyes and the shape of the mouth. »
21 « Figural » entendu au sens de Lyotard qui donne de ce terme la définition suivante : « Le “figural” n’est plus du côté de la “signification” et de la rationalité, mais de l’expression et de l’affect » (Lyotard in Acquarelli 2015).
22 Une seconde grande installation en ghostnets existe : MAP office, un collectif multidisciplinaire basé à Hong Kong, réalisa à la demande de la Biennale de Thaïlande, Edge of the Wonderland (2018), une installation de six mètres de haut entièrement faite de filets de pêche perdus collectés par des plongeurs dans le parc national de Kraki et en mer d’Andaman (Gutierrez & Portefaix 2019).
23 Du feutrage, Le Larousse donne deux définitions : « Agrégation intime de fibres textiles d’origine animale, pour en former des étoffes flexibles et solides, sans filature ni tissage » ; « Altération d’un tissu de laine qui, sous l’effet de l’usure ou d’un mauvais entretien, prend l’aspect du feutre ».
24 « Flat it in a thickness ».
25 « having the hair ».
26 « I show them a technique, I show them how to do something and often they come and say “look what I’m doin” and I say “it doesn't look anything like I showed you but I like it”. Again, it’s about teaching, I teach something, they do it, they teach me then, how they did it differently, I do it differently ; and so it keeps on growing and that’s what I like about collaborations. »
27 « At first, obviously the process is about using needles, it’s about stitching, and it’s about women’s work, that’s how they [the boys] viewed it, in a way. Initially we started making the bags and all kinds of female things; men have always helped us put things together, making a frame and that kind of stuff ; so they needed big needles. It was actually Kasey I think who was part of the art centre at that time. He started stitching. The others caught on and you’ve seen Jimmy with his big flat needle, Kasey made those needles, and suddenly they became a tool and not a needle, then all the boys started using these “new” tools. The two sculptures Dauma and Garom and the Weres everybody had to work on them. And Nino Sabatino, who was from Hammond, had already worked with ghost nets came to collaborate, this was good, he was not afraid of stitching. The boys saw the success of the women and they became adventurous and inventive in what to make. The whole emphasis shifted from utilitarian objects to large sculptures as we all realised we had to maximise the time and effort against an objects worth. »
28 Le prix de vente pour une œuvre collective de grandes dimensions pouvant aller jusqu’à environ 20 000 dollars australiens, des ventes de plus petites dimensions et aux prix plus bas assurent des rentrées d’argent plus régulières.
29 « I like the interaction; because for example when I am stuck at home and nothing is happening with my weaving, here [in Sue Ryan’s studio] I do, I ask, I try and it’s going somewhere. »
30 « It’s good when we all work together, thinking about others’ ideas, doing it together. We enjoy working together. We laugh and listen to music and sing. »
31 Partant du principe que dans les communautés les plus isolées les aiguilles ne seraient pas accessibles à tous, Chantal Cordey introduisit lors de ses ateliers en 2006 une pratique qu’elle avait observée en Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée et qui consiste à récupérer des baleines de parapluies usagés, celles qui ont des trous, et de couper la baleine à la taille voulue : le reste peut alors être utilisé comme une aiguille.
32 « I think I’m the only ghostnet artist that uses a hammer ! »
33 « It is a bit stronger and larger, so it is easier to use for the nets. »
34 « I must have been mad ! 11 kilometres of stitching. Never again ! »
35 « I am proud of what I’m doing. »
36 « saving a life in the sea. »
37 L’installation Plastic Bags de l’artiste Pascale Marthine Tayou a été présentée dans le hall de la gare Saint-Lazare à Paris en 2012.
38 « It reminds me of the colors of the sea: the deep blue, the green. It’s amazing how it’s shimmering while the first rope was so dirty. »
39 « […] all colors, blue, green, yellow, all mixed. But I like the yellow one. »
40 « I like the contrast between this permanent material — plastic, it will last forever — but the work, they look like ephemeral, like quite ghostly or fragile but there are not. »
41 « Deep Six and Deep Sixty used all the little pieces of rope that were not used to weave other things with, the leftovers, the tangled pieces that I could not undo and the bits I cut off. Because they were not suitable for weaving, I had to find an alternative way to connect them so I ironed them together into a fragile mat and then stitched over the entire surface to hold everything together. Once I had discovered this technique on a small scale and increased the size, I knew the technique and effect had more in common with abstract expressionist painting than basket making and I decided to make large panels using it. »
42 La plupart des groupes aborigènes interprètent les phénomènes atmosphériques et lumineux. Pour les Yolngu par exemple les jeux d’ombre et de lumière que les rarrks (motifs en croisillon) instituent sur la surface d’une peinture ou du corps d’un danseur rituel sont le reflet des êtres ancestraux. La brillance (birryun) est revendiquée par ce groupe linguistique de la Terre d’Arnhem comme l’une des plus importantes qualités d’une peinture (Morphy 2003). Voir aussi le certificat d’authenticité de cette œuvre.
43 « But of course because it’s not a shop, I can’t say I want this net and this color, so I am dictated by the colors, I am depending on the sort of nets I find, because different nets can be used in different ways. So I have to think. Like when we found that black net and you were telling me about that seagulls of this area [Finistère] ; so I was thinking “oh I can use these black nets and I can find some white nets”. And so then when we found that long straight rope I was thinking that it would be perfect for using a different technique. »
44 « four, five kind of nets, mostly the green one ».
45 « that kind of nets ».
46 « too bad, that’s what you get ».
47 « Because jellyfish is like the top of the head and so I just keep going and try and make these figures and I thought it was quite relevant. So I kept going and this one, I made several, is called : Til Human Voices Wake Us and We Drown. This one is very special, I can see its face, and it has a beautiful form. »
48 Par ses annotations faites sur mon tapuscrit, Jean-Jacques Petton souligne qu’il a toujours aimé glaner. Quand il était enfant, ses grands-parents l’envoyaient ramasser du bois pour le foyer. Il passait alors plus de temps à collecter des objets aux formes attrayantes qu’à constituer une matière utile au foyer.
49 Selon les chiffres communiqués chaque année par la fédération des plasturgistes, PlasticsEurope.
50 « they complement each other. »
51 « I always pick up the materials that work well with the techniques I am using ; for example, there are some plant materials you could never weave with, so you stitch with them. And it’s the same with the ghost nets. There are some materials that are not long enough or too thick so you can’t weave with them so you stitch with them. »
52 « it’s tough because the net is polypropylene and most of the glue don’t work well with that material. »
53 « I am getting away from the material, which is very different from Erub where they try to show what it is made of. »
54 « The fishing line is very slippery. It’s unforgetting, it’s the word. I got to know the material very well so I kind of know the limits of what is a good size depending of how big I want to make the jellyfish. Yes I just have to be patient and slow and sometimes accept that if I make a mistake I have to stop and undo it because that little mistake will just drive me crazy […] it’s not that quite as easy as fibre. And it’s a bit harder on my hands, but my hands are getting stronger. I have been using it for years now, so I’m used to it now. But it is very hard. »
55 Notons néanmoins que la tortue de Monaco possède dans l’une de ses sous-couches plusieurs coraux laissés volontairement sur les filets, trace d’un parcours aquatique. Mais le résidu organique ne fut pas particulièrement commenté par les artistes et n’apparaît pas dans la description analytique de l’œuvre (Le Roux 2016b).
