Found on a metalic dustbin: a black sticker, with three words on :
« Oh, No, John ! »
Nothing more. No explanations, nothing preceding it , nothing following it.
Simply the strange feeling of catching a glimpse of a story
Who is it meant for, where does it comes from??

End of the first chapter.

Lyon, sept 2007
Those three little words travelled, and, we,  young creative people, from various locations, answered, each in his/her own way, this exclamation, each bringing to it his/her own background  and imagination.
“Graphic design”, « art », « design », « object », So many words to speak about undefined fields, whose borders, sometimes so close, are still moving and changing through the years.
Beyond these definitions, everyone brings his/her own knowledge, skills, and vision,   in response to these words.
All these creations meet in this collective exhibtion, which is touring outside of the usual galery network, in order to offer it to the largest possible public.

We want, through these creations, to invite narration, provoke imagination and liberate the viewers’ own imaginations, by exhibiting various situations where « OH NO JOHN » could appear in their daily life. It is like an essay inspired by G.Perrec in « Les choses ».  Where, in the tiny and absurd of our daily life, beyond the futile and the seemingly-anarchistic nature of that daily life, we discover a common reality. « Ce qui se passe vraiment, ce que nous vivons, le reste, tout le reste, où est-il ? Ce qui se passe chaque jour et qui revient chaque jour, le banal, le quotidien, l'évident, le commun, l'ordinaire, l'infra-ordinaire, le bruit de fond, l'habituel, comment en rendre compte, comment l'interroger, comment le décrire? » (L'infra ordinaire).
“Where is the rest of what we live and of what really happens? How to describe and how to interrogate what happens every day and that comes back every day: banality, the obvious, the daily, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, noise and habits?”

Our creations are objects, or visuals; they are a glance at the ordinary, a realism offered, without any presumptions. They highlight, as does this exclamation, these ordinary thorns, these details in which we get caught, and which suddenly reveal some unsuspected truth. As many different ways as there are to pronounce these three words, as many different stories there are which are revealed; real-life offered, emotions shared. From the most pathetic situation to the most  foolish one, between poetry and crudeness, each project find its owns place and its own way to pronounce, to whisper, to cry, to blow, to breathe, to scream, to exclaim “OH NO JOHN !”.

Gilles Clement (a French gardener/ philosopher) likes to speak about “vagabond plants” that hang from someone, man or animal, to travel with and bloom further.
This exhibition has been conceived as a vagabond plant. It is travelling and developing, uniquely each time, depending on the host ground. Objects or visuals produced, as well as the exhibitions graphic communication, belong to its basic gene pool.
 All the above constitutes the basis of the exhibition, travels with it, and adapts itself  to the hosting place .

The energy put in these creations shows the dynamism of the creative emerging scene. It is activated by generous fresh ideas that just need to be shared. The complexity and motionless of the actual circle of galleries and official ways of diffusion push us to stay off-road. We try to remain in the energy of the street art which can be sometimes surprising by its unexpected presence.

The sticker that we found relates to this way of expression, and the makers (that we met) share their creation with the largest public by using streets as an open field for expression. By using this sticker as a starting point we tried to adopt the same ideas of sharing and we put into place a system of communication  where the public  stays in a daily environment. The viewer will enter an apartment which could be his, he may recognize a chair because he has the same one, or these shelves, almost forgotten... The creations displayed will then be eye- catching. They will be indicated by an obvious visual communication, inviting visitors to follow them.

>> THEME

Everything is calm, when suddenly... « OH NO JOHN ! »

What in our charming daily life can provoke us to  clam: « OH NO JOHN ! » ? (or MARY).
From the socks-which-are-always-lying-on-the-floor, to the most crazy and pathetic situation, we are free to imagine it.
This idea comes from a sticker «Oh, No, John! » found by chance in a street in Amsterdam. We tried to understand and to imagine which situations could provoke this exclamation. Universal, this sentence is understandable everywhere.
We then decided to share our personal vision of the “oh no John!” situations through our creations, which are our ways of expression. Theses creations are also an occasion to question: in which Oh no John situations can we recognize ourselves?