The commission

Located between Lille and Dunkirk, a few kilometres from the Belgian border, Esquelbecq Castle has been reflected in the surrounding waters for over 600 years.

This Renaissance castle, classified as a historical monument in 1987, has been owned by the Morael family since 1946. The castle was reopened in 2018 after more than 35 years of closure following the collapse of the keep on one wing, and the restoration of the interiors is currently underway.

The moat remains an essential component of the architectural ensemble, but the current concern is the risk of it filling in. Water plays a special role around the castle, but today the moats are no longer accessible by boat; sediments have accumulated, the pattern of the waterway is disappearing and the aquatic ecosystem is deteriorating.

The commissioning group wanted a work that was linked to the presence of water on the site and the issues it raises. The artistic intervention is to contribute to raising visitors' awareness of the management of this resource, its fragility and its omnipresence on the territory. It should also be an invitation to come and discover the park and its estate.

The artwork

The work proposes to go in search of water sources in the subsoil of the park, and this encounter is provoked by using traditional dowsing techniques. Nathalie Brevet and Hugues Rochette have scoured the castle grounds and detected magnetic nodes, signs of the presence of water. The places identified as reacting most strongly to the dowser's rod will be marked by a sculptural element.

These sculptures will be small glass objects in the form of rods made from molten glass and cast into a mould in the shape of a 'locating pin' such as is used to probe a piece of land. The cooling of the glass freezes the movement in the glass and creates a transparent "ripple effect". It is this "moving water effect" suspended in time that the artists wish to capture.

The artists

Nathalie Brevet and Hughes Rochette have been working together since 2001. Their journey is nourished by their respective experience in the humanities, space design, graphic design as well as the visual arts. Taking into account the urban context, the space, and the scale of the places constitute a strong characteristic of their work. Through recurring materials such as water and light, they explore the question of time and measure. This question is also found in the frustrating dimension of objects (industrial or artisanal) or living elements which, by reversal of meaning or form, become sculptures. Their practice also integrates writing such as the territorial stories they present in the form of readings / performances. They use trips and meeting points between disciplines to shift the perspective usually given to a place.