Bright hours
(2023)
from the Modern living series 2016–
- Medium
- colour digital video, sound
- Measurements
- 25 min
- Place/s of Execution
- Paris, France
- Edition
- ed. 2/3
- Department
- Contemporary Art
- Credit Line
- Purchased NGV Foundation, 2024
© ADAGP Paris, 2023 - Gallery location
- Mid 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
-
Gerard & Kelly’s Bright hours explores and speculates on the relationship between the famed Swiss-French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887–1965), known as Le Corbusier, and American dancer Josephine Baker (1906–75). It is the latest work in their series Modern Living, 2016, which places bodies, relationships and architecture into dialogue. In Bright hours Baker, depicted by St Louis–born dancer Emara Neymour-Jackson and Le Corbusier played by French actress Jeanne Balibar, appear in relation to the architect’s iconic modernist apartment block La Cité Radieuse in Marseille. With a soundtrack composed and performed by American singer Moses Sumney, Bright hours uses choreography to explore gender, race, sexuality and modernism’s real and imagined legacy.