Alistair Danhieux invites Audrey Ballacchino
1 March – 10 April 2025
Opening on Saturday 1 March 2025 with the artists
Audrey Ballacchino. Barbotine aux iris, 2024, grès chamotté et porcelaine émaillés, glazed stoneware and porcelain, 38 x 24 x 34 cm
The Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste is pleased to present the exhibition “Alistair Danhieux invites Audrey Ballacchino “. Neither similarity nor contrast define this duo inaugurating our 2025 programme, but rather the desire for an artistic encounter that took root in the landscapes of Puisaye. Alistair Danhieux lives in Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye and teaches at the CNIFOP, where Audrey Ballacchino reached a decisive milestone in her training.
Their works are inherently different. Audrey’s is largely inspired by the folk art of her Sicilian heritage. “I retrace the journey freely, like creating a postcard through a collage of sunlit memories,” she says. Her pieces, crafted from porcelain or heavily grogged stoneware, resemble evocative fragments of still lifes cloaked in a cream glaze. Thus, I summon spaces of appetite and aversion, embracing a baroque sensibility,” the young artist explains.
Alistair Danhieux, by contrast, engages in an exploration of form using engobed white stoneware onto which he applies abstract designs with a brush and oxides. His decor is expressed instinctively, driven by a quest for freedom. “This pursuit aligns with a meditative practice, an attempt to approach the work without judgment or fear of being judged. It is a search for sincerity, an effort to clear my mind of clutter, which I see as an obstacle to any creative process,” the artist reflects.
From one artist’s abstract compositions to the other’s monochrome, their works seem designed to absorb and reflect the personal memories of the viewer.
