Promenade à Greve in Chianti avec mes quatre garçons, 1975
Photogram from the 8 mm film
Excerpt from the digital transfer of the 8 mm film
Collection of The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
Françoise Sullivan’s four sons on the road to Greve in Chianti, 1975
Photo: Françoise Sullivan
Françoise Sullivan’s personal papers
Excerpt from a guided tour of the exhibition Françoise Sullivan. The 1970s with the artist and the curator, 2021, Galerie de l’UQAM
Promenade à Greve in Chianti avec mes quatre garçons, 1975
Digital transfer made in 2020 from an 8 mm film, colour, no sound, 5 min 20 s
Design, performance, and production: Françoise Sullivan
Image: Oswald Sullivan
Editing: Wayne Cullen
Collection of The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
When Françoise Sullivan returned to Italy in the summer of 1975, she is accompanied by her four sons. They stayed at La Camporena, an agrotouristic estate near Greve in Chianti. Her brother Oswald Sullivan visited them and took part in both family and artistic activities. The artist conceived and executed a walk meant to be filmed, as 8mm footage that surfaced in her archive in 2021 indicates. Her brother acting as cameraman and her sons all wearing black shirts walking along with her make it seem likely this was a planned artistic walk to be repeated several times over a period of two days. In keeping with her previous performances, Sullivan conceived this walk in a simple but structured manner, conscious of choreographic gestures and the movements of the camera that captured them.