Martine Bedin – The cheeky object
True to the playful optimism of her early days, designer Martine Bedin is reviving some of her older projects. She has now chosen to produce a selection of objects designed from the 1980s to the present day, which until now had remained mere sketches.
Her new designs retain the cheerful freshness of the various periods in her career. Remaining in control of her own destiny, Martine Bedin has freely reworked the colours, materials, proportions and sometimes even the structure of the furniture, resulting in pieces with a contemporary aesthetic, devoid of any vintage connotations, which lead us to reflect on the evolution of stylistic codes over time. These pieces were produced thanks to a Swiss patron who first hosted this exhibition at his Speerstra Foundation in Apples, on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, from 8 March to 8 August 2014.
We are all the more delighted to host this exhibition ourselves as Martine Bedin is originally from Bordeaux and was a member of the Memphis group alongside Andrea Branzi, to whom we are simultaneously dedicating his first retrospective.
Opening : Thursday 30 October 2014
Practical informations
Press kit and exhibition guide available on request from documentation.madd@mairie-bordeaux.fr
#madd_bordeaux
AROUND THE EXHIBITION
Design Thursday: 30 October at 6.00 pm
A talk with Martine Bedin
Exhibition curator
Constance Rubini, Director of the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design
Exhibition design
Martine Bedin
Martine Bedin, biography
A French designer born in 1957 in Bordeaux, Martine Bedin studied architecture in Paris. She moved to Florence on an architecture scholarship in 1978, where she discovered Italian radical architecture through Adolfo Natalini and the Superstudio group, and later New Design through Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis group. In 1979, she designed the Casa Decorata for the Milan Triennale. Memphis was founded in December 1980, and Martine Bedin was involved from the very first collection in 1981, alongside Michele De Lucchi, Georges Sowden, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Matteo Thun, Marco Zanini and Andrea Branzi.
In 1982, she opened a design and architecture practice in Milan, whilst regularly returning to Paris, where she taught design at the École Camondo. She regularly gives lectures and takes part in seminars at universities in Reykjavik, Montreal, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. In 1986, the city of Nîmes established Les Ateliers de Nîmes and invited her, alongside Jean Nouvel, Philippe Starck, Ross Lovegrove and Gérard Barrault, to contribute ideas on the city’s major projects. She then designed the graphic identity and interior layout of the city’s buses, transformed a bus into a mobile meeting room and redesigned the public toilets on Place de la Couronne.
In 1987, the French historic monuments authority commissioned her to design the visitor centres at the Palais du Tau, Reims Cathedral and the Château de Chambord. In 1989, she redesigned the bookshop and the documentation centre of the Caisse des Monuments Historiques, in the Hôtel de Sully in Paris. She continued her work as a designer in parallel, creating a collection of handbags for Louis Vuitton as well as a new monogram canvas. Two chairs were produced by Promosedia in Udine, Italy.
The summer of 1991 saw the launch of her publishing house, La Manufacture Familiale, in Bordeaux, and the creation of a unique collection of large-scale furniture for the BDX gallery. In 1992, she was awarded a Carte Blanche by VIA, for which she created a sofa and two armchairs, entitled *Persona non grata*. In January 1993, she was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Minister for Culture and Francophonie.
During the summer of 1994, she built her first house on the hills above Bordeaux, *La Maison Rouge*, and in October 1995 she was invited to exhibit the four houses in the nave of the CAPC, as part of the *Architectures* exhibition. Since 2002, she has lived and worked in Rome. Some of her works are held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris or form part of the National Contemporary Art Collection.
The Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design also houses a rich collection of works by Martine Bedin, which are being showcased in the museum’s galleries as part of the exhibition L’objet déluré.
The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design would like to thank:
Château Haut-Bailly,
honorary patron
La Fondation Speerstra
Les Amis du musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design
Air France
Le Chapon Fin
Château de Launay
Château Nairac
Grand Hôtel de Bordeaux et Spa
Samsung
Les Crus Bourgeois du Médoc
Station Ausone, partenaire média