Perpetually sinking boat

From Julien Berthier

Love love’ is perhaps one of Julien Berthier’s more unusual sculptural installations.
The floating sculpture is made from a large sailboat that has been modified to appear as if it is capsizing.
Despite its battered appearance the boat is fully functional and able to move around thanks to a built-in motor.

To create the piece a 6.5 meter yacht was cut in half and a new keel was added to allow the boat to remain upright in the sinking position.

Since its construction Julien has taken the boat out on numerous trips inside harbours like canary wharf in London and in Normandy, France.

For this piece he adapted an abandoned 6.5 meter yacht so that it appears to be perpetually sinking.

To create this, the vessel was split and a new keel was constructed allowing it to be sailed by Julien at a 45 degree angle off the coast of Normandy.

Love-Love, like much of his oeuvre, is impressive, poetic and humorous.

In this project, the artist invests his energies and resources into creating an art of fiasco, aiming in his words to “fix an object at the moment of its deregulation.”

The image, and metaphor of the sinking ship is an iconic one – it signifies death, lost hope and sinking dreams.

Berthier’s Love-Love freezes those sentiments permanently both celebrating and overturning them.

On display in the gallery will be the boat itself as well as a series of accompanying photographs and documentary video showing the performance in Normandy.

The boat now belongs to some wealthy London Banker to whom he sold it for £50,000.

Julien Berthier is an artist with great sense of humor.

We recommend spending some time on his website, exploring his methods of work.