Pierre Ribault was an artist…of sorts. An expert in mixed media, a vocally-cultured, well coutured costume-dandy and a lover of exuberance and pomp; a truly dedicated disciple of the house of bon viveur. Most who knew him considered him to be a flamboyant pastiche of fashion invention; a fancy Dan with an aloof perception of his own visual glory, but with a look that screamed ‘cliched fashionista’ rather than groundbreaking trailblazer.
His art was often described as ‘Abstract Impressionism’, a term he despised. He took the notion that labelling of any form was inhibiting and contrary to the ethos of free expression, encouraging artists to remain confined to a narrow bandwidth of creativity. For that reason, he would often, and quite at random, create pieces that were completely at odds with his normal output, mixing renaissance with modernism, symbolism with pop art, cubism with surrealism and so on. It was precisely due to his reluctance to conform that critics had a challenging time extolling his virtues, and as a consequence he struggled to establish his brand. He was unpredictable, edgy and…poor.
But he didn’t care about all that. His focus was on his relentless pursuit of individuality, his desire to be free from the corporatisation of the arts, and his love of the high brow and exclusive underground art scene that he immersed himself in. He hated anything mainstream; that simply wasn’t him. He wanted to be immortalised for how he lived as much as he wanted to be lauded for his art.
In late August 2010, Pierre visited Connelly Plastics Limited, a small family run entity who specialised in injection mould processing for the manufacture of miniature novelty farmyard animals. He was visiting their manufacturing plant in order to ascertain whether their liquified plastic could be colour blended to produce a vibrant multicoloured swirl, an effect he wished to incorporate into his latest visionary art installation. Unfortunately, it was during this short tour of the plant that Pierre accidentally tripped while traversing an overhead gantry and fell directly into a large vat of molten plastic, rapidly becoming completely submerged. Consequently, Pierre drowned despite Connelly Plastics Limited staff’s best efforts to retrieve him; the first death at a Connelly Plastics Limited facility in a little over three years.
Few, if any of the plant’s staff had any idea of who Pierre was and, whilst recognising both the cataclysmic misfortune that had befallen him and similarly, the potential scrutiny that the occurrence might have on their health and safety policy, they reached a consensus (subject to some brief research on Google) that his loss would probably not be deemed to be a great catastrophe within the art world. Nevertheless, they were keen to ensure that they had been seen to ‘do the right thing’ and not just engage in collective ambiguity in the inevitable ensuing investigation, as they had done with other similar mishaps in the past. This time, things had to be by the book.
Connelly Plastic’s leading technician decided, due to the depth of the vat, that retrieving Pierre’s body whilst the plastic was still in liquid form would be a hazardous endeavour, and therefore decided to turn off the vat’s heating element, wait for the plastic to solidify, and literally ‘chip’ him out; an exercise that took several days. Although somewhat macabre, this process actually produced something quite revelatory. The dried plastic had created a perfect, life size ‘Pierre Ribault’ cast, complete with the vibrant, multicoloured swirl pattern Pierre was hoping for; a happily ironic happenstance.
As they stood back and admired the cast, the staff from Connolly Plastics Limited collectively agreed that it would make a wonderful objet d’art. They subsequently sold it to the Tate Modern who created an innovative ‘Immortalised Artists’ exhibition, of which the ‘Ribault Cast’ became the centrepiece. The exhibition achieved worldwide critical acclaim, attracting art lovers from every corner of the globe. Now in its thirteenth year, it has travelled to over twenty museums worldwide and remains one of the forefront creative displays in mainstream art to this day.
