September 9–October 9, 2016
Opening: September 7
City centre Sint-Niklaas
(between Ghent and Antwerp)
Belgium
Meeting point:
WARP
Apostelstraat 20
9100 Sint-Niklaas
Belgium
Hours: Thursday–Sunday 10am–5pm
Coup de Ville invites emerging Belgian and international artists to occupy the city centre of Sint-Niklaas, a modest city between Ghent and Antwerp. Coup de Ville started in 2010 and is by now a Triennial for contemporary art. It is an initiative of WARP, a contemporary art platform in Sint-Niklaas. WARP created its own artistic model based on long-term relations with artists, starting from the encounters and feedback at the yearly international Artist Village for young artists since 2007. The majority of invited artists at the Triennial participated earlier in WARP Artist Village. The flow of small size exhibitions, lectures and educational activities grows every three years towards the larger scale of the artistic project Coup de ville.
The invited artists explore unique locations, typical for this city: domestic spaces and private saloons, art deco houses or famous baroque buildings, as well as public spaces and museums. This edition focuses especially on wastelands and in-between spaces:locations that seem to belong to nobody. Undesigned zones are part of every city urbanisation and can be characterised as locations with an open potential, they point towards the future. For this reason they are a metaphor for the participating emerging artists. Although they produce mature artworks, most of them are still unnoticed, but on the brink of an international career in the art world at the same time. The choice of “unknown” artists is a deliberate one and although Coup de ville is a low budgetproject, it is necessary to create interesting platforms for younger artists and we believe in the genuine curiosity of the public.
The artists create new work developing a dialogue with the environment, the citizens, visitors and their fellow artists. In fact, the artists bring on the themes in this exhibition and topics like privacy, the juxtapositions of house/home and mask/facade, grooming, intimacy and the relationship with nature have recurring status. All locations are within walking distance from each other and the whole exhibition is set up as a one-day trip. This year’s edition has a several great side events such as performances, concerts, lectures and artist talks.
Artistic director: Stef Van Bellingen
Stef Van Bellingen (1963) is a Belgian curator with mixed roots based in Belgium. Together with Jan Hoet (1936–2014) he started the first Coup de Ville in 2010. One of Stef Van Bellingen’s recent curated exhibitions is Vormidable, which is on display in Museum Beelden aan Zee in The Hague in 2015.
More information: www.coupdeville.be or [email protected]
Coup de Ville 2016 gratefully acknowledges the support of the Flemish Government, the Province of East Flanders and the City of Sint-Niklaas.
