Conte contat, quadre acabat

Opening: Thursday 22 October at 19:00 An exhibition by Michael Lawton and the girls and boys of the Escola dels Encants within the framework of the programme espais c ("Espais de creació artística en escoles de primària"). Espais c is a programme of the Consorci d'Educació and the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona that brings artistic practice and the public sphere of primary education into dialogue through long-lasting processes of coexistence.Ice creams living in a forest, bursts of colour, palaces full of happiness and sadness, mysterious islands dyed red, trapped lions, plane-dogs, angry planets…A world of fantasy born from the collaboration between the primary school pupils of the Escola dels Encants and the artist-writer Michael Lawton, who, during the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school years, moved his studio into a classroom at the school and invited the educational community to immerse itself in his artistic imagination.In this particular return to school, Michael's workshop becomes a universe of its own in which the protagonists—the girls and boys, the teachers and the artist—exchange roles, question certainties and unlearn ways of creating. When hands are busy, conversations flow, learning is multidirectional and art manifests itself in the most unexpected situations.A Told Tale, a Finished Painting originates in literature, turns towards painting and ends in a collective work of art that combines visual elements and oral narrative.The starting point of the project is some of the girls' and boys' favourite books, and on this basis the group of painters creates a series of works individually. When they are randomly combined and handed out to another group, these paintings detach themselves from their literary references to become the starting point of twelve completely new stories written collaboratively by twelve pairs of girl and boy writers. These narrations, told aloud by their authors, float through the exhibition space without apparent direction around twelve clouds of paintings, waiting for us to discover the invisible connections that unite them. From the margins, Michael's works observe this process while narrating their own stories in a low voice.