Bubble and squeak
Each year since 2008, Maison Ruinart has invited a leading contemporary artist to reinterpret its heritage for the Carte Blanche initiative. In a brand first, this year’s ‘Conversations with nature’ commissioned six artists, including Paris-based Japanese
THE FIRST AND oldest Champagne house, Ruinart is a long-standing patron of the arts dating as far back as 1896 when the family commissioned Czech artist Alphonse Mucha to create its first advertising poster. Now, each year, via its Carte Blanche programme, the brand welcomes a celebrated artist to unveil their unique interpretation of its history and know-how, with an imposing list of alumni including Liu Bolin, Jeppe Hein and Eva Jospin.
In this year’s Carte Blanche, entitled “Conversations with nature”, Ruinart offers for the first time a collective and diverse vision, driven by six artists from around the world – namely Andrea Bowers, Henrique Oliveira,
Marcus Coates, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Thijs Biersteker and Tomoko Sauvage. Spanning mediums and techniques, all share a profound bond with the natural world and an endeavour to illuminate the intricate interplay between humanity and nature from their distinct viewpoints.
The works will be exhibited at art fairs around the world before being brought together from October onwards in an Artists’ Garden at the maison’s headquarters in Reims. Exposed to the elements, they will be viewable all year round, immersed in a rich ecosystem of trees, plants and animal life.
Titled Into the Serpentine Bells, Sauvage’s first exhibition for Ruinart at Art Basel Hong Kong furthers her exploration of the sonic properties of water. In one cylinder of water, you’ll find submerged chalk pieces taken from the Champagne house’s ancient white chalk cellars. In another across from it, a hydrophone picks up the sounds of bubbles manipulating the surface. And beside it, a glass harp dynamically integrates watery physics. The produced singular sound is one that blurs the line between the organic and the electronic.
Tell me about your collaboration with Ruinart.
There are several projects this year. I’m on the Carte Blanche project, which means I’ll do a couple
of exhibitions at art fairs like this one in East Asia. But also I have a bigger, more permanent project, which will be revealed in France, in the Champagne region, in October. It’s a permanent sculpture piece for a garden.
Do you see parallels between the values of Ruinart and your own?
Yes, actually. Surprisingly, I found quite a lot of connections between my practice and Ruinart’s history and their site and just the general wine culture. As you might have seen in my exhibition, I transformed a glass harp instrument, which is a very old and quite simple instrument that uses wine glasses by means of friction so they resonate. I motorised a kind of wine glass, but it’s actually more like a small crystal bowl that rotates. I also integrated water and physics into this instrument to create a fluid timbre, a very special timbre. And this reminds me of the wine drinking gesture of rotating the wine glass.
In another piece, I used lots of bubbles made by this chalk, directly from Ruinart’s wine cellar. It’s built on a very deep chalk quarry, which is 20 million years of accumulation of marine microorganisms. And I used the porosity of this chalk to produce microbubbles in water. Then I amplify the sound with the hydrophones and the microphones. So this kind of marine life, which comes from this deep geological time, I dissolve in the water and make it resonate. I found it very surprising and also a satisfying result from using the elements of Ruinart.
Where did your passion for bubbles come from?
My passion for bubbles is a long story. It’s maybe 15 years that I’ve been playing with bubbles, starting with porous terracotta. It’s a ceramic and very similar to the chalk material. I even named it “fortune biscuit”, like a fortune cookie, because the bubbles from this porous terracotta sounded different each time in a very unexpected way. And it was revealing kind of a new soundscape every time. It felt like it was determining a direction so that’s
“It’s maybe 15 years that I’ve been playing with bubbles, starting with porous terracotta. It’s quite simple for me. I really just love to watch how bubbles are made” TOMOKO SAUVAGE