In April and May I am going to be writer in residence at Maisons Daura in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie in the Lot Valley, France for the Exoplanète Lot project organised by MAGP, Cajarc. The environment of the Lot Valley is imagined by the curators, Martine Michard and Rob La Frenais, as an alternative earth-like planet.

I plan to work on watery future fiction, to collaborate with visual artists and to organise future fiction workshops for adults and children. The other artists participating in the project are Tania Candiani, HeHe, Thomas Lasbouygues, Caroline Le Méhauté, Ludwig, Nahum Mantra, Angelika Markul.

Friday 13 May 6.30pm you can come along to meet the artists and see the work in progress at Residences Maisons Daura in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

The Exoplanète Lot exhibition will open at MAGP, Maison Des Arts Georges Pompidou, in Cajarc on 2 July and run until 4 September. Full details in MAGP_prog_2016.

The Surrealist Andre Breton spent sixteen summers in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, declaring it to be ‘his one place of enchantment …. I stopped wanting to be elsewhere …. The list of its charms is very far from exhausting the secret… each day on awakening, it seems to me that I open the window onto the richest of hours, not only of art but of nature and life’.

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie is also close to the Pech Merle caves and their prehistoric paintings.