About the Work
Its pretty obvious that immigration is a leading social and political issue in today's France. The Parisian suburb of St Denis is what their newspapers call 'ethnically vibrant' if they want to be polite or 'swamped with immigrants' if they don't. Few tourists find their way to St Denis, even though it is where the concept of France started. Nearly every French King is buried in the Abbey of St Denis starting in the 5th century with Clovis the first King of the Franks. The Abbey is also where the Gothic style was invented, including the iconic rose window. In this work, I copied the design of that window and put pictures of the ghastly white stone effigies of the Kings and Queens around the outside. The main section is the vibrant bit as it is made up of pictures of people in the street markets surrounding the Abbey. In the centre, effigies of a king and queen's respective feet stick up. This work is also a homage to Duchamp's famous work 'Fresh Widow' - his own pun on French Window.
″I still use the same approach to my work: I get an idea, think of the title and then make the work. So not much has changed since 1964″
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