Darling Newhaven Resident: Alexia Laferté-Coutu

ESW is delighted to welcome Alexia Laferté-Coutu as the first resident in the Darling Newhaven exchange. This is the first year of a three year exchange programme that aims to connect Scottish and Quebec based artists and organisations, facilitating cultural and knowledge exchange.

Alexia Laferté-Coutu lives and works in Montreal. Her sculptures and assemblages reveal a dialog between constructed histories and somatic, sensorial experiences. Originating with the pressing of fresh clay ‘poultices’ onto the stones of historical buildings and monuments, her works become records; recuperating and transmuting the intentional and residual aspects of her source material. Laferté-Coutu has studied at Concordia University, the Bauhaus Universität Weimar, and Université du Québec à Montréal. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, South Korea and the UK.

You can discover more about her work here.

Additional project information can be found here, including the project funders.

Since her arrival in Edinburgh Laferté-Coutu has been documenting and researching historic wells in Edinburgh. With this work she is thinking about how their curative powers were associated with different myths through time. Her process involves pressing thin layers of clay onto the stones of these structures. Here is a glimpse of her first intervention at St. Bernard’s Mineral Well. Laferté – Coutu’s plan is to cast the collected fragments into bronze and reassemble them into a large scale sculpture. With this work Laferté-Coutu asks how can process alter the spiritual and historical significance of a place? Could this prospective sculpture evoke new myths?

This programme has been generously funded by the Conseil des arts de Montréal with support from Creative Scotland and British Council Scotland.