The Residents is a National Trust artists-in-residence programme curated by Inheritance Projects in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary, BALTIC and The Hepworth Wakefield. Hosting three artists/artists group in National Trust properties across three regions, the project invites the artists to develop their practice through critical engagement with the historical and contemporary contexts of the buildings. Work produced during each residency period will be exhibited on-site and in the nearby regional gallery throughout 2012.

30 June - 19 July 2012

Exhibition
Treasurer's House, York

30 June - 19 July 2012
Open everyday except Friday, 11am - 4.30pm

Laure Prouvost is installing a series of works onsite at Treasurer's House. Developed during her residency at the National Trust property during 2011, these interventions, incorporating instructional signage, spotlighting and sound, subtly manipulate the viewing experience as visitors encounter the work throughout the historic home of local industrialist Frank Green. Treated with Prouvost's familiar irreverence the history of this home and its translation within a contemporary setting become complicated as authority is raised into question and meanings begin to slide into uncertainty.

Film: The Wanderer (Heritage)
The Hepworth Wakefield
30 June - 1 July
7 - 8 July
14 - 15 July

Comprising six narrative sequences, The Wanderer filmed by Laure Prouvost is based on a script by artist Rory Macbeth who, without any knowledge of German, translated a Franz Kafka novella into English. The film follows a number of characters that undergo a series of increasingly bizarre and mysterious experiences, navigating various situations in which reality becomes increasingly uncertain.

Working for the first time with a full crew and a cast of actors, Prouvost used Macbeth's text as a loose framework rather than a definitive script, opening up the narrative to the various shifts and slippages of language and direction introduced by filmmaking process. The first sequence of The Wanderer focuses on the notion of time and the second sequence focuses on the character Betty who, in a state of intoxication, delivers a rambling monologue directed alternately at peripheral characters within the film and us, the audience. This third sequence, The Wanderer (Heritage), takes on the theme of heritage and places the protagonist Gregor and his family in the grand surroundings of Treasurer's House, York, jarring with their humble existence. There, members of the public become part of the story and the characters themselves the objects of history.

Performance
The Hepworth Wakefield
Thurs 19 July 2012

Laure Prouvost will be joined by artist Rory MacBeth for a performative exploration of her film The Wanderer incorporating clips from the film and a discussion.

Whilst in residence at Treasurer’s House Laure Prouvost will be dividing her time between two projects. The first is her ongoing film based on artist Rory Macbeth’s ‘translation’ of a Franz Kafka novella, attempted without any knowledge of the German language. Using Treasurer’s House as one set within the film, the story depicts a stranger, caught in storage, hallucinating, with no sense of separation between time and space. Simultaneously Prouvost is working toward a series of onsite interventions playfully engaging with the various idiosyncrasies of Treasurer’s House last owner, industrialist Frank Green.

Only a few metres from York Minster, Treasurer's House was the first house ever given to the National Trust complete with a collection. It has a history spanning 2,000 years, from the Roman road in the cellar to the Edwardian servants' quarters in the attics, and thirteen period rooms in between. These house one man's remarkable collection of antique furniture, ceramics, textiles and paintings from a 300-year period.

Laure Prouvost was born in 1978 in Croix-Lille, France and lives and works in London. Her video installations challenge the nature of the filmic medium by rendering the exhibition space part of the narrative, with the audience subsequently becoming an implicit part of the work.

Recent solo exhibitions include before, before. before it was, the title sequence, spinning before next, a squid, at MOTINTERNATIONAL, London, April, 2011; Art Now Lightbox: Laure Provost: It, heat, hit at Tate Britain, London, 2010; All These Things Think Link, Flat Time House, London, 2010; Frieze Frame, Frieze Art Fair, London, 2010; Present Future, Artissima Art Fair, Turin, 2010; Storeybored, After the Butcher, Berlin, 2009; Burrow Me, Lighthouse, Brighton, 2009.

Recent screenings include The Ann Arbor Film Festival, Michigan, USA, 57th Oberhausen Film Festival, Germany and Videozone 5, Tel Aviv Biennial, Israel. In 2011 she was the principle prizewinner at the 57th Oberhausen film festival and was awarded the MaxMara Art Prize for Women.