The Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière, 60 km east from Limoges, France, is dedicated to contemporary art creation, experimentation, production, research, exchange, training and reception. Vassivière is on an island site and is dedicated to a temporary exhibition programme set in a romantic wooded landscape in the middle of a 1,000 hectare lake reached by a footbridge. The architectural setting comprises a tower-lighthouse standing on the edge of the forest and a rectilinear gallery building designed by Aldo Rossi and Xavier Fabre.

The current exhibition of Thomas Houseago, curated by Chiara Parisi the centre Director, presents a series of monumental sculptures and anthropomorphic figures sited in the interior spaces and the wood, and a bronze lantern in the middle of the lake on Snake Island.

“Thomas Houseago’s sculptures are made from members made of plates of plaster scribbled with graphite and of heads in traditional materials like wood or bronze. His figures, walking or crawling assume poses that evoke a hypothetical transition between man and animal. Although imposing, monstrous and powerful looking, they also appear fragmented and vulnerable.”

http://www.ciapiledevassiviere.com