Over the course of a years-long nomadic practice that led them to the Villa Médicis in Rome and the ceramicists’ village of La Borne, by way of Sète on the Mediterranean coast and Brest in Brittany, they have now settled on a former farm in the mountains.

In Brussels, the exhibition “Elle/Terre/Chaude” brings together a significant selection of some fifty pieces – many of which have never been displayed in public before – around a central installation. This dense exhibition sees plinths, sculptures and textiles overlain with one another in a dizzying array of planes and panels. The artists’ creative process centres on carefully designed encounters between materials and a plural approach that draws on reuse and recycling. Their works bring together raw materials (wood, sandstone, linen) and mixed techniques (cuts, ceramics, dyeing), taking on a rugged appearance drawn from nature, vernacular techniques and folk art.

Entitled “Elle/Terre/Chaude” the exhibition by Île/Mer/Froid offers “a crossing-over to the other side”, in the words of its curator Joël Riff. The duo’s works are accompanied by ceramics by Richard Dewar (b. 1949) as well as sculptures by duo Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel (b. 1976 and 1975). The walls of La Verrière play host to photographs by Marianne Marić (b. 1982) and paintings by Julien Meert (b. 1983), while the exhibition as a whole is accompanied by a new text by writer and ceramic artist Philippe Godderidge (b. 1955).