FRANÇOISE SERGY

 

 

Dance was Françoise’s first love. Born and brought up in Switzerland, she came to London in 1975 to study contemporary dance. She then slowly established herself as a dance artist, always performing on her own but creating works in collaboration with visual artists, photographers and choreographers. She then developed skills as a photographer and installation artist. She is also a 1st Dan in Tomiki Aikido, although she had to stop practicing the martial art suddenly after sustaining a major knee injury.

 

Françoise was a member of Brixton Art Gallery, a 1980s artists collective, and of Chisenhale Dance Space, an experimental dance and performance space, both in London. After ending her performance career in 2000, she focused on photography and installation, mainly through art and science projects. With residencies in hospitals, biochemistry institutions and botanical gardens, exploring medical imaging and scientific research, she is creating a unique body of work, bringing together separate worlds and disciplines in a way that only artists can.

 

At the age of 40 she fell in love with plants and trained as a gardener. Now working part-time as an artist, she finds that her projects take a long time to come to fruition but she doesn’t mind. She enjoys the scientific grounding horticulture has given her, using it as another tool in her creative process. Plants have become her main subjects - she finds them completely bewitching and wonderful to work with. Her aim is to reveal how important they are in our everyday life, even if we are not aware of this, and to celebrate them.

 

All of Françoise's past works are presented on this website: You can view videos of the performances, images of the installations and information about the art and science projects.

 

 

 

Art and Science

 

 

Fruit Full

(separate website)

 

the project has its own website:

www.artsciencefruitfull.uk

 

Fruit Full, art and science: exhibition (2020) and website (2021)

first exhibited (complete work) at the Museum of East Anglian Life in Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK

The project was due to be exhibited in several venues during 2020 and 2021, including in museums, art galleries and hospitals. Most shows were cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

artist residencies:

Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition, University of Reading, UK

Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (UK)

National Fruit Collection, Faversham, Kent (UK)

Wilkin & Sons, Tiptree, Essex (UK)

New Park Farm, Groombridge, Kent (UK)

 

Fruit Full is a partnership between the artist and fruit growers, jam makers and nutrition scientists. A multimedia art and science project, it offers a unique perspective on a very topical issue: why do we like sugar so much? Fruit Full is about fruits versus sugar.

It is Françoise's third art and science project exploring the importance, often hidden, of plants in our everyday life. Here, she has chosen to study five fruits, three of them familiar to everyone and two whose popularity has sadly waned in the UK.

On the website, you will discover these fruits and their power to evoke and please all our senses. You will find out how they are grown and produced on farms and how they are made into jam in a factory. You will learn how sugar has changed the course of history and about its impact on our society to this day. You will explore the work of nutrition scientists and some of their research. You will see installations by the artist featuring everyday objects with unexpected appeal. And hopefully, by the end, you will know why most of us like sugar so much... Go to: www.artsciencefruitfull.uk

 

 

The Fox Got You

(separate website)

 

the project has its own website:

www.foxgotyou.uk

 

The Fox Got You, art and science: exhibition (2015) and website (2016)

first exhibited at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, followed by a UK tour (7 venues)

artist residencies:

MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, Cambridge (UK)

William Harvey Research Institute, London (UK)

Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology, University of Warwick (UK)

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust (UK)

 

The Fox Got You is an ambitious art and science project. Developed over a few years, it has enabled Françoise to bring together her favourite themes for the first time: plants, the body, illness, medical science. It is a celebration of common plants at the origin of major medicinal drugs and features people involved at each stage of the journey from plants to drugs. The exhibition included a greenhouse transformed into a giant light box, as well as hand-made books and interactive exhibits.

 

The website features detailed plants portraits, their anatomy and habitats; images of scientists at work and information about their research; the history of the drugs; interviews with doctors, patients and scientists; and finally a series of artworks by the artist exploring scientific images and plant biology. Go to: www.foxgotyou.uk

 

 

Hop, Stock & Bent

(separate page)

 

The project can be viewed in more detail on this page.

 

Hop, Stock & Bent, art and science: exhibition (2006) and interactive animation (2009)

first exhibited at The Manchester Museum, followed by a UK tour (4 venues)

 

artist residencies:

Millennium Seed Bank Project, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens (UK)

Wye Hops Research Station, Kent (UK)

 

Hop, Stock & Bent is a photo-biography of five common plants, Françoise’s first art and science project entirely dedicated to plants. She chose them because she liked their names and because they are ordinary plants, rarely noticed. She researched their uses, the places where they grow wild, where they are cultivated and the people working with them. She also worked with scientists at the Millennium Seed Bank Project, part of the Royal Botanic Gardens, dissecting and photographing seeds under microscope. The work was shown as an exhibition of hand-made photography books before becoming an interactive digital animation which has now been made into a series of videos.

 

On this page you will find the project's videos, as well as interviews of the people working with the plants featured.

 

 

 

Installations

 

For recent installation works, go to art and science

 

 

In(•)Sight and In(:)Sight

 

 

ultrasound installations

artist residencies and exhibitions (1998, 1999):

St George's Hospital, London (UK)

Mayday Hospital, Croydon (UK)

 

Between 1997 and 2002 Françoise’s photographic work explored medical imaging, particularly ultrasound which is routinely used for looking at fetuses in the womb. During a residency at the Fetal Medicine Unit of St George’s Hospital in London, UK, she was able to work with ultrasound scanners. There, she experimented with scanning different types of objects. She was also invited to take photographs of fetal ultrasound scans, with the agreement of patients. She then made an installation in a scanning room at the Unit, where small toys placed in a fish tank were ready to be scanned. Her next residency took place at the Maternity Unit of Mayday Hospital in Croydon, UK. There she worked with sonographer Fariha Anwar and made a second installation, shown in the Unit's waiting area. Separately, she included some of the ultrasound images in her performance work LH Phantom, which can be viewed on this page.

 

"Ultrasound scanners use high frequency sound echoes to map out the inside of the body. They can also scan objects, as long as these are submerged in water. Air stops the sound waves from moving forward, so the secret is to scan materials which do not contain air: anything water based, like the body, or some types of food and most plastics. I tried to scan wood, bread, nuts and stones but they contained too much air. Metal objects also bounced the sound waves back without creating a shape. Glass surfaces were very interesting: the scan of a light bulb seems to show a face, like a phantom peering through. The resulting images were mainly abstract, with the source material unrecognisable or completely transformed."

 

"For the second installation, I concentrated on another idea, that of scanning an adult face. Ultrasound probes are not designed to scan surfaces with bones at close range. Working together with sonographer Fariha Anwar, various methods had to be improvised, usually involving placing my head in a bucket of water. Whilst I was holding my breath, Fariha would explore all possible angles to catch an elusive view of my face. Many images became insect like, with large eye orbits and no personal features but finally a powerful, haunting death mask appeared (see last image below)."

 

 

• 
  In(•)Sight
  
• 
  In(•)Sight
  
• 
  In(•)Sight
  
• 
  baby's bottle
  
• 
  baby's dummy
• 
  fetal hand
  
• 
  fetal head
  
• 
  fetal skull
  
• 
  lightbulb
  
• 
  object
  
• 
  object
• 
  portrait
  

 

4 Insights: Seeds

 

 

installation featuring ultrasound and other medical imaging

exhibition (2001) and interactive digital animation (2002)

Ferryview Health Centre, Woolwich, London (UK)

commissioned by Valentine Plus PMS

funded by The Regional Arts Lottery Programme

 

These artworks were Françoise’s last projects exploring medical imaging, following the performance works IVF+ACL and LH Phantom (to view the performances, go to this page).

 

In 4 Insights:Seeds, four types of medical imaging were explored: images from keyhole surgery, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound scans and X-rays. Some of the images were of the artist’s own body, taken during fertility treatment and following a knee injury. In this installation, the medical interventions were quietly, almost secretly displayed - perhaps only noticeable to those who had experienced them. And for the first time, Françoise explored the world of plants by revealing the beginning of a new life as an embryo in a seed and a human in the womb. The installation featured photographic stained glass, images under water and a light well. After the exhibition, Françoise made an interactive computer animation of the project.

 

4 Insights:Seeds was exhibited in a health centre, by the main entrance and in a space next to the waiting area.

 

 

• 
  4 Insights
  
• 
  4 Insights
  
• 
  womb balls
  
• 
  bits of knee
  
• 
  my liver
• 
  looking
  
• 
  seeds
  
• 
  light well
  
• 
  stained glass
  
• 
  stained glass
  
• 
  stained glass
• 
  stained glass