Work
Of Territories. Marseille en Août
Sketchbook spreads, Marseille
2004–2005
Twenty-five spreads from a sketchbook kept in Marseille across the summers of 2004 and 2005, drawn in watercolour, ink and pencil, most of them running across the fold so the gutter cuts through the middle of the street.
What they record is the ordinary commercial face of the city: shopfronts and their hand-painted signs — Librosol, Restaurant Touba, Bar Albert under its Ricard board — shutters half down, awnings collapsed, vans parked at the kerb, a torn DÉGUN poster. The line is quick and the colour thin, laid over pencil that stays visible; several sheets are barely more than the drawing, left uncoloured.
Sixteen years later the same attention is turned on Mapusa, in North Goa — the same shopfronts, the same lettering, the same loose watercolour. The two sit together as Of Territories. Mapusa in June.
