Human Nature Nature Humaine

An exhibition by the group Dialogue Dialogue is the collective name given to a group of eight French and British artists; Joss Burke, Graham Chorlton, Dominique Etna Corbal, Peter Grego, Myfanwy Johns, Véronique Lamare, Tom Ranahan and Francis Viguera. Dialogue began with a need to unite, connect and communicate between France and the United Kingdom. The first group exhibition in 2008 titled A bridge, brought together artists from Birmingham and Bordeaux under the theme Nature Morte, Still Life in English. Language, its use, commonality and difference has from the start been an integral part of the project. In 2010 the group showed in the inaugural exhibition of the Art Chartrons Festival, titled Dialogue. Following the success of the exhibition the name was adopted by the artists as a group name. The spelling and meaning being identical in both French and English, it provided common ground for the artists. In 2011 Dialogue curated exhibitions in the Article Gallery in Birmingham and Oxford Brookes University. In 2012 Dialogue undertook a six month project with mac Birmingham, an event called Allotment. This involved eighteen artists from the UK, Ireland, Germany and France and connected for the first time, via live web streaming, the garden Cairnhill in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of France. The exchange of ideas continued with visits, postal projects and Skype meetings. The first exhibition to record this exchange was in 2014 at Rugby Museum and Art Gallery, UK. Titled Apporter sa pierre à l’édifice/Bring to the table it focused on the use of culturally specific phrases and idioms. The idea of movement, uprooting was central to last exhibition of Dialogue at mac, Birmingham in 2016. The exhibition Déraciner explored ideas and concerns about the movement of people and objects. The word “deracinate”, also connected to the natural world, became the catalyst for the exhibition "Human Nature Nature Humaine"