crafting practice

stitching, drawing and bricolage

This website brings together past and current projects by Françoise Dupré. Distinct in choice of materials and contexts, the artist’s projects nevertheless form a corpus of individual works and temporary installations through which the artist explores the transformativity of art making, using crafting techniques to create artworks that alter our social and physical spaces, and invite our imagination.

Dupré’s crafting practice is conceptually underpinned by the choice of textiles for making and meaning. Textiles does bridge across art and life and contributes to identity formation and culture. It is also associated with the feminine and has a powerful domestic as well as transnational context through time and space.

The website is a multilayered recording by the artist of her practice, defined as transversal and multidisciplinary. It is therefore recommended for its visitors to use a computer screen. Scrolling on a phone might not be fully satisfactory. To facilitate the viewer’s navigation, the projects have been grouped together under distinct headings. They can be viewed by clicking on the links: couture, crafting space and spirals. Early installations and past collaborative and participatory projects are archived and grouped under bricolage, art making in the social and projects archive pages.

Françoise Dupré is a French artist, an independent researcher, project director and curator, currently based in Orléans, Loire Valley, France.  Over the years she has developed an international career with exhibitions, residencies, commissions and collaborative-participatory projects in UK, USA, Australia, and Europe.  The artist also regularly publishes writing about her research. For a complete CV, click here F.Dupré CV

Couture

Couture focuses on drawing and stitching as a performative act of memory. Tapping into her French working-class background, the artist reconfigures her mother’s school stitching exercises, collection of fabrics and objects from the family home – to create drawing and stitched artworks in the form of temporary installations.

crafting space

With Crafting space, Dupré transformed– through cutting, stitching and pinning– everyday objects, such as woven and printed carrier bags, to create installations that change our perception of specific sites.  The artworks aimed to become portals to open up multiple narratives of migration and cosmopolitan experiences.

spirals

Using the spool knitting technique also known as French knitting, the artist made a series of artworks with knitted tubes assembled in spirals. A wide range of yarns were knitted, woven with plastic tubing and wire. Theses artworks aimed to celebrate the joy of making in the everyday.

For more details on Couture, crafting space or spirals click on the links to open pages. For early installations and collaborative-participatory projects click on bricolage, art making in the social and projects archive.