Bubbly yet sincere, celebratory yet serious: champagne is a famously enigmatic concoction. These were just the contradictions that artist Georgia Russell brought out in her collaboration with Ruinart’s Blanc de Blanc: “We can think of champagne as being a light-hearted thing but it’s actually something that’s quite meaningful, since you open it at a wedding or a christening.”
Working with the gravity of its occasion and the freshness of the chardonnay, Russell has created a “masterpiece” sculpture that works Ruinart’s first ever account book into a human-sized paper explosion, as well as an exquisite bottle ornament that shows the play of light through its delicate lace.
Georgia Russell, The Grand Livre, for Ruinart.
Russell’s technique of exploding books, recreating them out of slices of light paper, began on the banks of the Seine where she browsed for books to improve her language skills. The artist used the occasion to repay her love for France, her home of 14 years, taking her inspiration from the differences in language that create a subtle moment in reading: “I think when you look at a book and it’s not in your own language you see it differently – it becomes more of an object than a text. It becomes more evocative – the imagination works more when it sees something it doesn’t know. It was thanks to France it all started!”
And what could be more French than Ruinart champagne…
Georgia Russell Ruinart bottle ornament for the Ruinart Blanc de Blancs collection
For a full interview with Georgia Russell, watch out for Sleek 42, published in early June.