LE REGARD CLOS

2011 Toulouse Lautrec Museum, Albi, France

This commission provided us with an opportunity to make work in response to the collection and site and in addition devise the outreach and engagement programme for la Nuit Européenne des Musées; a national, annual event to increase diversity in visitors to historic collections and museums.  
In the main entrance courtyard a work using four hundred and eighty small hand-fabricated windmills, built with the public over the course of the opening evening, into a large-scale interactive windmill-shaped floor pattern greeted visitors to the Toulouse Lautrec Museum, to create a vast “Moulin Rouge” from red windmills.  
Poetry texts by the activist poet laureate for Derbyshire, Matt Black, were performed, in collaboration with students from Rodez University around the galleries and an ‘Orchestration Poetique’, based on deconstructed texts by Rimbaud also took place.  
Sheffield based artist/writer Vicky Morris collected the public’s reveries and reflections, in response to Lautrec’s works, which over the course of five hours were delivered with digital, looped musical improvisation from DJ-Only Michael, a sound artist and musician. This produced a spontaneous participatory performance by and for the audience in the main auditorium.  
In the foyer visitors were encouraged to dress up and make their shadows into silhouettes on light sensitive material reflecting the well-known cabaret drawings by Lautrec.  
The opening event was opened by a regional choir greeting visitors to the museum, singing local traditional songs.
This collection of works was devised and curated by brook & black.

Gallery: Musee Toulouse Lautrec, Albi, France
Date: May, 2011
Funding: Banque Populaire Occitane, MMA, SAFRA, S.A.M,Albi, MTL, Albi
Acknowledgments: Our thanks for commissioning us go to Madame Daniele Devynck, Conservateur en Chef du Patrimoine et Directeur de L’Etablissement Public Musee Toulouse-Lautrec.  In addition, thanks go to the gang from Sheffield for helping us make the opening night such a success and to the ‘voices’ in the video, from the Alliance Francaise, Oxford, who discussed Lautrec’s work with us.