Imagine clearing the furniture from your home on a Friday and then allowing a total stranger to come into your home in order to exhibit their paintings, photographs or sculptures in your sitting room, on your patio and on the walls. Walls where photos of your family and paintings acquired on your travels normally hang. Now stretch the imagination a little further to the Saturday evening. More than a thousand people of several different nationalities are thronging the streets of your small town, including the narrow street outside your front door. Then for four hours in the evening they start coming into your home to view the exhibits placed in your lounge, dining room and hallways the day before. As if this isn't enough, another batch of visitors start arriving in your home, same time on Sunday evening.
This very scenario was occurring for the third time in Es Migjorn Gran this August. Christened the Gran Migjornale the event has been biennial since it began in 2006. An inspiring figure behind this event has been Bruce McLean, Professor Emeritus at the Slade School of Art, London. He lives in Barnes, Middlesex, and in Es Migjorn. In 2005 he organised an exhibition of sculptures in people's private properties around Barnes. He emphasised to me that the concept was not his originally. In fact a Belgian artist, Jan Hoet, put on an exhibition in Ghent in 1986. This was entitled "Chambres d'Amis". The idea of exhibiting artists' works in other peoples' homes had begun.
Bruce McLean talked to the artists forming a strong community in Es Migjorn, following the success of his Barnes experiment in 2005. He explained the concept and managed to encourage the local people to open up their houses. Thus the Migjornale was planned for 2006 and the Amics de l'Art des Migjorn began their admirable work. Everybody who wished to become involved began to plan the August 2006 event in the spring of that year. Every resident of Es Migjorn was circulated with a request to open their properties for the inaugural event. Around forty properties were used that first year during the weekend of 13th-14th August. The total had grown to fifty for this year's event. The majority of these properties have been used in all three of the years.
Bruce has ambitious plans for the future; indeed he would like to see the exhibition taking on a more international characteristic. His really ambitious plan is to build a museum of minimal art in the town.
The strength of Es Migjorn's artistic heritage can be clearly seen during the Migjornale. It demonstrates the wide form that the term "art" takes. For example visitors were entertained by musicians in the Pla de l'Eglesia during the welcoming ceremony on the evening of Saturday 14th August this year. Amongst these exceptionally gifted musicians, some of whom have played with the London Philharmonic, are those who have homes in the town. One should not forget that Es Migjorn's Band performs at fiestas throughout the island during each summer. The musical pedigree is further underlined when remembering Glasgow-born, but adopted son of Migjorn, David Russell: honoured in the town by having a street named after him, David plays in concert halls around the world.
Performing arts were also represented by the troupe of acrobats who performed each evening in the square beside the old school. Many genres of painting were represented catering for a very wide range of tastes. Photography and sculptures added further variety. In the streets there were workshops taking place, giving the visiting public the chance to participate in addition to simply gazing and admiring the works on display. Prior to the weekend, Brian Smith, originally from London, conducted a course of three two and a half hour sessions teaching water colouring techniques.
A guide is produced for visitors with all the exhibitors matched with the properties in which their work can be found. Thus visitors follow a trail around the town, entering houses of such differing proportions. Sometimes finding one's way down steep stairs, sometimes going through a sitting room and a kitchen that open out onto an internal open courtyard, usually equipped with a well. Viewing works exhibited on patios that give glimpses of unexpected shaded gardens in the midst of the town's tightly packed dwellings. Marès-lined archways, vaulted ceilings, pretty courtyards are all the hallmarks of the architecture found in the old centre of the town that is clustered around the church and its square. As well as admiring the various artists' work one is left admiring the architecture and the character of the houses, many of which are one hundred and fifty years old.
It was a privilege to be invited inside to see the interiors of houses that are usually behind closed doors. The simplicity and coolness of the homes will be a lasting memory for me. The tapas bars added to the wonderful atmosphere of a town closed to motor traffic for the weekend; devoted to the tranquil pleasure of art appreciation.
A week after the Migjornale a similar event took place in Fornells, with fewer houses being open and used for exhibits. Ferreries also opens its doors. The next Migjornale will be held in August 2012.
My thanks to Graham Byfield, whose gallery and home in carrer de Sant Llorenç was open to visitors, for all his help about the background to this event. I am also indebted to Bruce McLean for his information about the initiation of the event. Above all, thanks to the people of Es Migjorn Gran who make the whole experience so enjoyable.