Laure Prouvost

L'Almanach 14 : Laure Prouvost

Born in Croix, in the north of France in 1978, lives and works in London.

Laure Prouvost is the first French artist to win the prestigious Turner Prize, attributed to artists born or residing in Great Britain, with her video Wantee.
This video, shown for the first time in the exhibition Schwitters in Britain (2013), pays tribute to the German artist Kurt Schwitters¹. The name KS or Kurt appears repeatedly in the video. The work refers also first and foremost to Schwitters’ companion, Edith Thomas, nicknamed Wantee because of her habit of asking, "Want tea?"
The artist presents a fictionalized first-person narrative of a grandfather, a conceptual artist who disappeared while trying to dig a tunnel all the way from his living room to Africa, and a grandmother, a close friend of Wantee who spends her time collecting objects and preparing tea.
In her work, Laure Prouvost uses video and objects to create a weird world that is both disturbing and burlesque. The earth, nature and craftsmanship are omnipresent, as are references to modern and contemporary art which she mocks.

¹ Born in 1887 in Hanover and died in 1948 in Ambleside, England. Kurt Schwitters was a painter, sculptor and poet and one of the major protagonists of the Dada movement. He left his home in Hanover with his Merzbau, a construction dramatically altering the building, when he took refuge in England in 1940.