"Here, the roads are so badly damaged that it's impossible to drive faster than 30 km/h for fear of losing a tyre. Yet it's not for lack of desire to speed up when you can see almost beyond the horizon, but it must be said that the rubber graveyard on the side of the road is pretty scary. So we keep up this slow pace, punctuated by regular braking. The wheels of the cars that have passed by have left tracks in the dust. Through the open windows: endless fields of cotton, dotted with electricity poles keeping time. And the engine and Mavis Staples sing in unison as we drive down the old Route 61 towards Tutwiler. Louise Laborie
The legendary ‘HIGHWAY 61’, also known as ‘The Blues Highway’, has been Louise Laborie's dream for a very long time, ever since her childhood, which was filled with American music: "At 14, I was a fan of Elvis, and I was already dreaming of this road trip on Route 61, from Chicago to New Orleans. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my favourite musicians, see these legendary landscapes with my own eyes and find an extra resonance in the music I love." She conceived this exhibition as a travel journal, excerpts from selected moments, illustrated and enhanced by memory. We wander from drawing to drawing, with the impression of going very far and following in her footsteps. The common thread is American music, which is part of Louise's DNA, and to which she pays tribute by giving it such a prominent place in her very first exhibition, like a thank you that she has been preparing for a long time. ‘I listen to music from the moment I get up until the moment I go to bed, and sometimes I dream about it at night. I listen to everything, from the oldest and most corny stuff to the trendiest pop stars. I particularly love American music: blues, soul, rock “n” roll, jazz, country...’
This exhibition reveals her appetite for places where solitude and melancholy reign, unloved places, motorway service stations, dormitory towns, car parks, industrial estates... the ‘neglected’ places she often draws: "I think that's why the United States inspires me, because we know this country through images we've seen over and over again, images from Hollywood films, the famous American dream... images so carefully crafted to create desire that it can only be disappointing when you step through the screen. There's a certain melancholy in that which speaks to me. It's so big, everyone gets around by car, you often find yourself alone in huge, empty spaces, and you wonder what you're doing there. ‘
Melancholy sets the tone for this exhibition, comforting like the blues. ’Each drawing is inspired by the places I've been and the moments I've experienced, but above all I've tried to convey the mood of the journey, the atmosphere. I wanted people to be able to hear the music through the images."
When asked if this trip held any surprises or unexpected sensations for her, Louise recounts a powerful moment that she also drew: "Throughout the trip, I listened to the music of Jimmy Duck Holmes, the last bluesman of Bentonia, a village in southern Mississippi. Very quickly, I set out to find Jimmy and get him to sign his record. Jimmy runs a café called the Blue Front Café. I went there and waited for him. When he arrived, I bought his album, which he was selling behind the counter. He signed it impassively, then turned on the small television in the corner of the bar and sat down on a stool in silence to watch the news. The images of the hurricane that had just hit Florida were playing on a loop. To my left, Jimmy's guitar swayed gently in the wind, balanced against a garden chair. There was no one else but us in this dingy bar that seemed lost in the middle of nowhere. We waited for time to pass in a silence that neither of us wanted to break. I drank my £1 can of beer and left. This story, unassuming as it may seem, is the story of the Blues, and it is undoubtedly this contrast between the glitz of the American dream and the sometimes harsh reality of this southern part of the United States that is the source of the artist's inspiration: "My work in general always revolves around the points of contact between the real and the imaginary. I like it when reality, with all its disappointments, mixes with dreams, fantasies and desires.
Watercolour is her favourite technique, and for this exhibition, Louise has swapped her pen and black ink for a lighter graphite pencil, enhancing her charcoal drawings to ‘make the images a little more hazy and less defined, and give them a more pictorial, less static feel, as if they were coming out of a dream’. Many of the illustrations in this exhibition depict night scenes in which the artist plays with chiaroscuro: bringing light to what is dark is Louise's magic, and perhaps the most beautiful way to draw Blues...
Welcome to ‘Highway 61’ with the best guide there is, the immense passion and talent of Louise Laborie!
Louise's Biography :
Louise Laborie graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2020 and currently works as an illustrator and comic book author. After exhibiting her illustrations at the Boulogne fair in 2018, she studied comic book drawing in New York, where she fell in love with the work of American artists. Her first comic book, Morgane Fox, was published by Sarbacane in 2022. Louise will release another comic book with Sarbacane next October, entitled ‘Rock n'roll suicide’. In addition to her publishing projects, she collaborates with various newspapers (TOPO, CCI, La Revue Dessinée), press publications (Le Monde, Les Echos), cultural institutions (Le Centquatre, le Pop-up du Label) and companies (Pernod Ricard).
Welcome to the unique world of Louise Laborie! Her trademark: an approach that is as poetic as it is caustic, fuelled by absurdity and humorous derision, served up with remarkable compositions, bright colours and a playful treatment of light.