The AA School of Architecture presents an exhibition of the work of the French Montreal-based artist and architect François Dallegret (1937-). Dallegret's own life and work defies anything so predictable as a neat synopsis, but in essence his work - beginning in Paris in the late 1950s and early 60s, and later taking in New York and Montreal - absorbs everything from intricate line drawings for a series of astrological vehicles and designs for a number of machines (from those that assist in cooking a meal to others that generate literature) to the 'A Home Is Not a House' collaboration with the critic Reyner Banham; a drugstore/gallery in Montreal; proposals for a new Montreal Palais Métro; designs for chairs, more cars and yet more machines; a film collaborative set up to shoot a western; contributions to the Montreal 67 Expo; bars of soap; subversive credit cards; 'ironique' villas and light installations.
Examples of all of this work will be on display in the AA Gallery in the form of drawings, photographs, films, cars and a small cosmology of objects designed and produced by François Dallegret from 1957 to the present day.
Launched in tandem with the exhibition, the AA will also publish a catalogue of the show, illustrating a great many of Dallegret's works and also containing texts by Alessandra Ponte, Laurent Stalder and Thomas Weaver.
