• For three weeks, 200 billboards are made available to 50 street artists from Montpellier.

  • This exhibition is funded by JC Decaux.

    It follows a royalty exemption offered by the municipality.

    A decision taken without deliberation in the municipal council which led to the seizure of the Court of Auditors.

  • The artists are not paid, but join the project.

    At the same time as the event, an online prize pool was opened.

The city of Montpellier looks like an open-air art gallery. Until May 18, two works by fifty street artists, living or born in Montpellier, are exhibited on 200 advertising panels in the city. One way to help the original creation hit hard by the Covid-19 health crisis.

The Art Station collective, which had undertaken in 2016, then in 2018, to redecorate the Corum tram station, had launched the idea of ​​a large open-air exhibition in recent years.

“It didn't work out with the old municipal administration.

There, it turns out that it pleased the news ”, details Boris Norbert, president of the association.

He dreams of a similar project in other cities in France.

“We have a few touches.

We would like to perpetuate this approach, challenge and show that we can put art in the middle of pubs ”.

The absence of an itinerant route

This large-format open-air exhibition has a cost estimated at around 200,000 euros. It is fully supported by the JC Decaux display unit, delegatee of these advertising spaces. One way to return the ball. "We are", a collective of various left opposition to the city council, seized in March the court of accounts to denounce an exemption of royalty 264,901 euros which benefited the company, without deliberation in the city council. Financial assistance justified by the community by the lack of visibility of these panels due to the pandemic in 2020.

This street-art campaign in the city is a delight for fans, some of whom have gone hunting for works by internationally renowned artists, such as Mr Garcin, Salamech or Seb Niark1.

This is also one of the regrets linked to this exhibition since the works are not the subject of a traveling tour.

The oblivion is being repaired.

"A small organizational problem prevented us from having the list of locations, but we reference them as we go," explains the collective.

Not remunerated, the artists adhere to the project

The artists, for their part, are not directly remunerated, but adhere to the project, in this complicated period.

"Really delighted to find two of my works in the streets of Montpellier among the hundred selected", relishes Mr Garcin.

The reproduction of these posters, in three cheeses, is for sale online in the form of a solitary kitty opened on Kisskissbankbank.

“The money raised will be divided equally among all the artists.

We hope to exceed the objective of 10,000 euros, ”concludes Boris Norbert.

If nothing is official, it is whispered to the town hall that the approach could quickly be renewed, this time by coordinating with other actors such as the tourist office in order to further promote it.

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  • Languedoc-Roussillon

  • Street art

  • Publicity

  • Montpellier

  • Culture