Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum in their studio in Mile End, Montréal, 2013. Photo by M-KOS
Montréal based artist duo Séripop (Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau) are known for their printed paper-based artwork, often assembled from loud and colourful posters into the large installations, as well as for their noise band AIDS Wolf and unique fashion style. Although they have been around for nearly a decade, they recently popped out as a breath of fresh air on Montréal’s art scene for the Quebec Triennial in 2011. M-KOS visited their studio in Mile End, the city’s main artist quarter.
MKOS: Can you tell us how Séripop started out?
Yannick Desranleau [YB]: We initially got together as a couple in 1999 and both were doing art and music on the side, but really it was the music that brought us together.
Chloe Lum [CL]: We decided to start a band playing music together and ended up merging our art practices. We were both doing videos and performances at the time.
YB: We didn’t start collaborating full-time until 2002.
CL: When we dropped out the school, we really became a collaborative unit. Because we were playing music, in a DIY noise band, and it seemed natural for us to start making posters for our shows. We started seeing posters as a place we could experiment formally and realize some possibilities by looking at them on the streets.
MKOS: Is that why your work is mainly paper based?
CL: Our main material is screen-printed paper and we build our own environment out of it.
YB: The way the posters were decaying over time has brought us to do installation work.
CL: By just looking at some posters wrapped around objects such as lamp posts or mail boxes and started peeling off or decomposing. This natural process of decaying has also ramped up the ephemeral side.
Séripop, J’m’en suis déjà souvenu, 2012. Installation view at Art Souterrain 2012, Montréal. Screen printed paper. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Yannick Desranleau
MKOS: Degrading, non-weatherproof paper, are such elements always part of your creative process?
YB: We are very aware that the quality of the material is especially finicky.
CL: It’s hard to control.
YB: In its nature we cannot easily keep paper except under a certain conditions like laying it flat and so on. For us, because we felt more comfortable in working within this kind of environments, we gravitated towards using paper as our main materials. But we always knew, despite being so interesting, that the printed paper is not permanent.
MKOS: It’s ephemeral but it’s also multiple…
CL: Yes. It allows us to work in a modular way, it’s not necessarily site specific but more like site type specific. We can adapt installations to fit in different rooms. The ephemerality is always interesting because it brings in an element of chance. I feel our work is really formal and super planned down to the last details, like everything is sketched about 20 times before we come into the studio. We usually know exactly what we are doing before we start. Because we are covering surfaces, we have to have the measurements of the gallery space, full plans and so on.
YB: The ephemerality of the medium and the fact that different paper stocks degrade in different ways becomes the way to bring out the elements of chance into super uptight productions or bring the element of failure, I guess.
Séripop, Hoarding Skin, 2010. Installation view at Secret Project Robot, Brooklyn NY, USA. Screenprinted paper. Courtesy the artist. Photos by Rebecca Smeyne
MKOS: Do you still have strong ties to street art, poster art, graphic design, punk aesthetics and so on?
CL: Not really. Even when we were in an underground band, that was our milieu, we were not interested in punk aesthetics, visually. We were just really interested in the fact that it was something we could do, whatever we wanted to do.
YB: We are interested in the environmental aspect of street art, even though I don’t mean a reaction to the surroundings of the settings. In this aspect and in a broad definition of street art, we could consider ourselves a part of it but in terms of the aesthetics we don’t really give a f***. [Laugh]
MKOS: Often street arts contain political statements, do you carry any political content in your work?
CL: We feel like we do, we have some kind of political approach in our work but in a very personal way. It’s not really didactic…
YB: Our work affects more a literal side of politics. If there are any undercurrents, they will be often decrypted on personal bases or by chance, being seen or read by people.
CL: I guess a lot of conceptual content we have in our work is more like personal research, someone can read the essay or whatever to have some ideas, we appreciate that maybe, but it’s totally not necessary because it’s more about we come up with the idea and give it a framework. We see our work as primarily formal. I think we are a lot more interested in post minimalist sculptures than punk graphics.
Séripop, The Options That Are Offered To Us: The Least Likely / The Most Tolerable, 2012. Installation view at TRUCK, Calgary. Screen printed paper. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Yannick Desranleau.*The installation is also shown at B-312, Montréal
MKOS: The work you are currently showing at B-312 looks more held back, more simple than, for instance, the work you showed at the Quebec Triennial 2011.
YB: For B-312, we wanted to play it off with just a simple complementally colour compositions which we thought would be enough to articulate the work. The piece at the triennial had so many layers of ideas which was typical stuff that we were doing in the past three years, cramming as much stuff as possible, experiencing the feel and seeing the stuff in the layers around us. It is interesting to see when people get exposed to the work by chance and have multiple readings of it as well as how the work relates to people and gets into their psyche.
CL: It’s also interesting to have such fluid, ambiguous elements and different streams of researches that also bring in other elements of chance. I’m not interested in telling people how to read the work.
MKOS: The work at the triennial seemed more about volume, and B-312 more about surface, do you always experiment in these different ways?
CL: Actually I feel that the work in B-312 is more sculptural, with the lights reflecting over the draping paper.
YB: This idea became interesting because by working on the surface, we were actually creating an illusion of volume.
MKOS: What about your site-specific project, is it still going on?
YB: Yes, it is still going on. We went to a small town called Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu because it was easier there to do this kind of project.
CL: We mentioned our project to different people and we showed it to an artist-run centre there. They were enthusiastic about it, and said “we will scout around and talk to the city administrationâ€. That’s how it started.
YB: The project was interesting to me because I’m originally from the area so I know the history of the place and that made it easier to articulate the settings of the work. Basically, we partially wrapped the building, let it decay and documented the process of gradual change.
Séripop, Avancez un arrière (the 1st day & 3 weeks later), 2012 – . Site specific intervention in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec. Screen printed paper, building, weather. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Yannick Desranleau
CL: Probably the most important aspect of the project was to choose the building, knowing it would be knocked down and the piece would be able to run its natural course until its demolition. We were not interested in doing murals or anything pictorial, this is why we decided to use large, flat and super bland colour papers, often repeating the colours already on the building. We wanted to highlight the decaying space, already slated for demolition.
YB: It is a compromise between a camouflage of the work and a camouflage of the building that can create a new façade.
CL: Also we wanted to create a work intrusive enough so that people would not necessarily notice it was covered. The last thing we wanted was for it to look like something beautiful, durable and commercial.
MKOS: It became more like a caricature of itself?
CL: Exactly. I feel that the blandness of the colour – beige, brown, grey or off-white – highlighted the deterioration, too. Because its camouflaged so much that you see the tears more and elements hiding on it. It’s just there to evolve in a natural and organic way.
YB: There is a certain relational aspect to it. We spent months just researching how this would work and react to the building or its surroundings, doing different muck-ups, although it may not show how much time we spent on the project.
CL: we especially didn’t want it to look like a decoration of the building, because that is the real danger when you do something outside, in public and in the institutional realm.
MKOS: You don’t want it to become a promotion for local municipal culture institution?
CL: Exactly.
YB: The ironic thing is that the city council was completely adverse to it. They gave us permission at first but they didn’t want to be associated with the project, if anyone complained.
CL: We were there for weeks and always had to go through certain official structures. For example, we had to use a cherry picker to go 35 feet up and we had to get Hydro-Quebec to work with us because of the high voltage lines and so on, no one from the municipality was willing to be publicly acknowledged. It was a kind of weird.
Séripop, Dis-donc à la grosse de se tasse, 2011. Installation view at Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga, ON. Screenprinted paper. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid
MKOS: It sounds almost indicative of your whole story. You have been around for ages but all of sudden, let’s say, from the Quebec Triennial everybody in Montréal wants to know more about Séripop.
CL: It’s really hard to judge. We’ve been working for so long and showing internationally since 2004 or 2005 but we just had our first solo exhibition in Montréal now. So it’s funny we kind of feel alien here sometimes but try to stay busy with other stuff.
MKOS: So you consider yourself more successful outside Montréal?
YB: Not necessarily. Just the opportunities came up that way. At the early stage, we put our stuff on the Internet and that worked very well. Also the fact many artists got involved with noise music helped us a lot.
CL: All the curators we worked with early on were the ones we knew through the noise scene. Especially in the UK, we met people who worked for the Arts Council and played in noise bands and out of casual conversations the opportunities came up to us, so it was random or chance events. Especially in the UK and some parts of US there are huge overlap of avant-garde underground music and contemporary art. Many people play gigs at night and have institutional jobs during day. So we’ve already had some people in the UK and US supporting us. Then, all of sudden, after the Triennial people in Montréal started asking us “who the hell are you guys?†presuming that we are kind of outsiders. But I don’t feel like we are outsiders, we know tons of artists here and go to the openings, so it is quite weird.
MKOS: Do you still play in a noise band now?
CL: No we played our last show in May, and disbanded.
YB: We now focus on visual arts, partly because our interest has shifted as well as our desire towards touring has died out. I guess we are getting older. [Laugh]
CL: We spent a little over a decade heavily touring, staying in a basement in Detroit, a warehouse in LA, in a pile of piss in Hamburg and so on. We are really glad that we did it but it is time to move on and also I’ve now gone back to art college so there are other priorities. Also, with visual arts you can be more self-sufficient and self-contained, while in music, you have to rely on so many different people.
Séripop, You should be able to read it from 30 feet away in a car going at 50 km/h, 2010. Installation view at the Baie-Saint-Paul 28th International Contemporary Art Symposium, Baie-Saint-Paul, QC. Screenprinted paper, lumber, plastic toys. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Yannick Desranleau
YB: We still feel the same aesthetics between music and art so we don’t feel we’re missing anything. The sound we were creating has now translated into visual ideas.
MKOS: Are you still in touch with the noise scene at all?
CL: Definitely, our social life is still very much around musicians.
YB: As soon as we go to another city, our first point of reference is often musicians.
MKOS: So, what’s your next project?
YB: We have two shows in March one at Engramme in Quebec City starting on 1st March showing a piece from 2012, and then showing new works at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau in the Belgo building, starting on 6th March. We are in the process of developing for this show, still experimenting.
CL: We had a residency in Rouyn at the end of last year. We were given the gallery space as a studio and we did a lot of very improvisational work. So we are thinking to take some of the ideas that we started developing there, streamlining them for the show at Hugues’. Normally, at this point when the show is so soon, everything is done but now we are doing a lot of experimentations in the studio.
MKOS: Hugues Charbonneau is a commercial gallery, so do you have a different scope on ephemeral aspects of your work?
YB: A little bit. We always worked on paper on a big scale so there are always parts that cannot be recuperated but we have been introducing more and more standalone pieces, kind of straight up statements, permanent stuff. Also we use modular format printed multiples that can be reinstalled many times. We are pushing that aspect. We also have a small body of prints and editions which are available there.
CL: We are in a good situation with him because he told us to do whatever we want. He is pretty open about it, which gives us a lot of leeway of what we can show, what is going to be the best idea and not necessarily have to show what people can take home with them. So it allows us to try out different standalone stuff, but not being too attached to them, even if the end result is not so satisfactory. We will see what we come up with in a month’s time.
MKOS: And what about your dress code – the big glasses, loud and colourful outfits etc – is this also part of your artistic statements, in continuity to your creative practice?
CL: We are just into a certain aesthetic. [Laugh]
YB: People may think the way we dress is kind of a statement but we just take it to the level we like.
CL: You should see our apartment! The entire place is covered in texts, images and forms. Let’s say it’s like our installations times 50… â–
Interviewed by Oli Sorenson
Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau in their studio in Mile End, Montréal, 2013. Photo by M-KOS
Séripop is a visual art unit composed of Yannick Desranleau (b.1978, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC) and Chloe Lum (b.1978, Sudbury, ON), since 2002. Séripop has shown worldwide including solo exhibitions at The Blackwood Gallery at University of Toronto; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen, Scotland; Tacheles Kunsthaus, Berlin. Recent group exhibitions include Québec Triennial II – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; Baie St-Paul Contemporary Art Symposium, Baie St-Paul, QC; Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria. Séripop’s work is in the collection of the several institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. They also have given talks extensively in Canada as well as abroad. Séripop is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau in Montréal. Lum and Desranleau live and work in Montréal. They also were part of Avant-Rock trio AIDS Wolf. seripop.com
Séripop is currently on view at B-312 in Montréal through 9 February 2013
Forthcoming exhibitions: at Engramme, Quebec City from 1 March 2013; at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal from 6 March 2013
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