The film, La première partie du roi Henri IV de double V Shakespeare: une analogie, is a filmic extension of the book shot around a group of artists attempting to stage Shakespeare’s Henry IV using the inhabitants of a small town in Columbia as actors. Marrying film shot in and around Barranquilla, with a soundtrack comprising a narrated poetic text taken from the manuscript of Absolument nécessaire, the film unfolds in both literary and cinematic modes, unfolding like the pages of a book.

The ‘tablotins’ are an ongoing series of collages that Casinière has produced throughout her career. Composed through handwriting and drawing and found images including stickers, advertising, photographs and postcards they layer personal references and critical commentaries on the mass media, articulated through a dense intertwining of languages including French, English, Italian and Spanish. Hanging side by side in large numbers, Casinière describes them as an ‘impossible book’, defying any attempt to trace a narrative or thematic focus. Instead, they come to represent the ‘cacophony of information’ with which we are increasingly bombarded in our negotiation of life in the 21 Century. A series of large-scale poster prints also borrow the visual language established in the ‘tablotins’.

The tablotins will be accompanied by a selection of films made by Casinière and a group of artists known as the Montfaucon Research Centre. These films borrow the language of television broadcasts in order to critique the medium itself and many were commissioned by and broadcast on mainstream French and Belgian television networks in the 1980s.

Joëlle de La Casinière (b. 1944, Casablanca) is currently based in Brussels. Recent solo exhibitions include Brandeburgischer Kunstverein (2009), Heidelberger Kunstverein (2007), and Croy-Nielsen Gallery , Berlin (2006). Recent group exhibitions include The Barranquilla Principle, Centre d’art contemporain la Synagogue de Delme, Delme (2010) and Politiques de la vision, Espace d'art contemporain, Geneva (2008). Her video work Grimoire Magnetique was included in Documenta 8, Kassel (1987)

With thanks to Astrid Mania

Exhibition kindly supported by the French Embassy in the UK and The Block

Click HERE to download an interview with the artist