LAZARE / THE SPACE BETWEEN HOW THINGS ARE AND HOW WE WANT THEM TO BE

Design Myles Quin, Mécènes du Sud, 2020;
Box-book, 38pp, signed certificate of authenticity plus 18 + 18 two-colour screenprints, edition of 30, all pages numbered and signed; booklet, 50pp, four-colour softcover, edition of 1000

Lazare… was an ephemeral work co-created with the Mucem and the users of the French state pawnbrokers (Crédit municipal). In it gethan&myles spent their entire production budget and artist fee buying gold sold at auction at the Marseille branch of the state pawnbroker - they then contacted the people who had pawned these items (and subsequently been unable to repay their debt) and asked them if they would be willing to participate in the work by sharing the stories of these powerful, troubled objects. The items would be exhibited with their stories - and alongside crowns, funerary masks, crosses and other museum pieces - at Or, the Mucem's grand summer show. In exchange they would be treated as donors of artworks and, at the end of the exhibition, have their lost gold object returned to them.

These 'hidden' stories were extremely moving and thought-provoking, raising important questions about migration, capitalism, value and social precarity - and the two publications were created to allow this ephemeral, site-specific work to live on and travel widely. As well as a limited-edition box-book of 36 two-colour screenprints (18 gold and blue jewels and 18 red and black stories in English and French) there is a bilingual book dedicated to the project (with an exclusive short-story by Prix Renaudot winner Valérie Manteau). In the spirit of the work, the softcover booklet was given away for free - but with the suggestion that whatever value the reader felt it had they might donate to a charitable cause of their choosing. The money from the sales of the box-book was shared with the owners of the jewels.