Makers | Mixtapes - Ad Libitum
We launch a brand new series today, Makers | Mixtapes, taking you on an audio adventure inside our favourite creative spaces. We ask one creative, or creative couple this month, to share a selection of the music that they like to listen to while they’re making.
AD LIBITUM
Alchemists and artists who paint with words, objects and atmosphere, Valérie and Sébastien are restless creatives, who have been collaborating for more than 24 years. Their creativity has many outlets and encompasses antiques and interior decoration, fine art curation, fashion deconstruction / reconstruction, jewellery-making and writing. They live in the heart of the Ardèche region of France in a heritage home-turned-boutique with adjoining workshops where they have the space to create annual exhibitions and an atelier/boutique for their fashion label, Revers de Fortune.
Excerpt from their upcoming long-form feature in Issue 4 of FAIRE, which will launch in January 2022 - you can pre-order your copy here.
In conversation with Valérie Rambaud and Sébastien Verger
Photography by Ruth Ribeaucourt
‘Sébastien and I met 24 years ago in an art centre where we both worked. He had just finished his studies in advertising and communication. He has been passionate about archaeology ever since childhood – I remember he told me how he had discovered minerals, animal bones and insects in his primary school class with the help of his teacher. ….When we met he was drawing and painting and I remember one project he worked on, playing with old letters that he glued on different supports and covered with earth-coloured pigments. It was as if he was burying memories of past stories.’ Valérie
“I remain fascinated by the abundance of his ideas and his ability to realise them so quickly. In fact, life is a creation for him. He is one of those people who can transform the notion of beauty.” Valerie
Valerie’s 2021 exhibition, TEMPO, featuring work by artist Renaud Buenerd
‘Valérie was a graduate of Fine Arts (Beaux-Arts) and a cultural mediator at the Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble when I met her. She is a visual artist, passionate about contemporary art, and has always loved history and archaeology, like me. I would describe Valérie as having a shy and dreamy nature. From a very young age, she was creating worlds of her own through her drawings and paintings. Her studies at the Beaux-Arts college allowed her to discover conceptual art, the artistic process, photography, video, performance and the use of space. Art became like a second mother tongue for her. At the same time, writing also became a major means of expression.’ Sébastien
Valerie’s 2021 exhibition, TEMPO, featuring work by artist Renaud Buenerd
‘…every summer since 2014, she curates and creates an extraordinary exhibition in one of our showrooms (located in an old mill). Each installation is a story linked to her personal approach. She works on it for one year and the exhibition becomes a collaboration with an artist – a dialogue with the physical space as well as my curiosities….In this space, which has a distinctly ruined industrial feel, she creates the setting, the play of light and an artistic dialogue with the architecture of the place.’ Sébastien
‘Our long-term dream project was to live and work with our curiosities, antiques and works of art. We wanted to welcome our clients into our home by appointment, where we would have time for meetings as well as time to create. We found our current home in the Ardèche, where we can bring all our passions together and have created a unique work–life space.’ Sébastien
‘…Sébastien has always loved clothing as a form of expression. His ceaseless search for beauty in both his daily fashion and his philosophy of life is transmitted in the way he presents himself to the world. He carries with him a significant part of his cabinet of curiosities. And as Sébastien became more and more interested in clothing, jewellery and accessories, he created his own fashion label, Revers de Fortune, in 2018. Revers de Fortune is the wardrobe of a rich, eccentric dandy who, after a reversal of fortune, wants to maintain a certain social standing and panache despite his decrepit and ruined clothes, which represent the flamboyant remnants of more moneyed days.’ Valérie
“I am most moved by her capacity to write short stories, through which I feel she reveals herself most intimately. Her imagination builds worlds, characters and stories that speak of what inhabits her every day: the burdens of secrets, the difficulty of creating, the family bond, transmission, madness, language, silence, the delicacy of feelings and emotions. Her writing is poetry to me. She is interested in the question of the point of view and the narrator. Who tells the story? Who speaks and how? These themes are also present in her fine art work. After having resumed writing in recent years, she is now looking for a publisher.” Sébastien