Mélissa Longpré
in Carleton-sur-mer

EXHIBITION

Fleurs liquides, spécimens et autres refuges (Liquid Flowers, Specimens and Other Refuges)

Mélissa Longpré, Montreal, Québec | melissalongpre.com

Mélissa Longpré is presenting three photographic series resulting from a research and creation residency done at Chaleur Bay in the summer of 2021 in partnership with Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie and the City of Carleton-sur-Mer.

The artist’s approach consists primarily in traveling over a chosen territory equipped with her camera and a knapsack to capture images and collect specimens. Her research focuses on the connections that exist between our attention to the biodiversity of a region and our sense of belonging to it.

In parallel with her photographic practice, Mélissa Longpré likes to experiment with material. During her residency she cooked vegetable-based inks with wildflowers, leaves and fruit picked at Chaleur Bay. Deposited in dribs and drabs on watercolor paper, the colored puddles dry out, revealing as they do their own geography. Liquid Flowers presents a selection of these natural-ink rings.

Like a naturalist, Mélissa Longpré is committed to identifying what she finds. A chunk of driftwood with holes created by shipworms, the synsacrum of a seabird, a mussel shell covered in coralline algae, a deer vertebra, the skull of a raccoon, the foot of a ring-billed gull: each specimen was found in the region and photographed on a splash of ink composed of plants gathered in the same environment.

On her excursions she captures refuge scenes, those moments where she’s completely absorbed, those places where the landscape becomes the workshop. With the elements she gathers, she creates compositions that she photographs on the spot or in the studio. She identifies which shapes to extract and which to transform. She strives to reveal the unnoticed, to kindle curiosity before the minuscule and the familiar, as well as to heighten our awareness of living things.

Exhibition at Rencontres

Liquid Flowers, Specimens and Other Refuges

Mélissa Longpré is a native of Carleton-sur-Mer, and lives in Montreal. Her research is fueled by the collecting she does and the observations she makes in natural settings and in urban environments. She holds a certificate in plastic arts and a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. She considers the book an exhibition space and a medium in itself, and a number of her projects take that form. In 2020 she self-published the photobook Aux embouchures, which was part of the exhibit L’édition comme finalité (The Publication as Objective), co-staged by Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie and presented in Carleton-sur-Mer, in Montreal and in Nantes, France. In June 2022 she launched the book Fleurs liquides. She has received the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts for research and creation projects as well as residencies, the most recent of which was done last May in Tromsø, in northern Norway.