Algae Paper is an ongoing project initiated by Julien Villaret in 2014 using the Ulva, a seaweed species present in large quantity in the north Brittany shore (Fr) as an aesthaetic ressource to develop some experimental paper sheets, printings and sculptures in an immersive discourse around art and ecology.

As a multidisciplinary artist working with different techniques like silk-screen, offset and etching, I always wanted to explore the artisanal technique of papermaking, in order to complete my skills in the field of printmaking. That’s what I did in Berlin a few years ago in the workshop of Gangolf Ulbricht, starting first to recycle fabric and cardboard to create new sheets of artisanal paper.

At the same time during the summer in Brittany, I observed with curiosity the phenomenon of the green tides. This environmental anomaly is a massive rejection on the coasts of tones of Ulva, a green algae, produced mainly because of the pollution of the rivers caused by intensive farming. This has been a problem in the region since decades, and it's regularly condemned by ecologists associations and inhabitants of the region as a major environmental issue. Aknowledging this situation, I tried to consider this problem as an opportunity to experiment a new artistic practice.

That’s what did when I produced my first artisanal sheets of Algae Paper in 2014, with green algae collected on the beach of Locquirec in Brittany. Since then, this project has taken a lot of different aspects, from the Algae Paper masks (artifacts refering to a fictional primitive culture) to the collection of Algae Paper compositions (big size collage of Algae Paper sheets reminding the aesthetic of early XXth century modernism movment). All these works are linked to the ecologic, cultural and economic context from where the seaweed were picked up. They talk about the disturbance of the environment, our relation with this major crisis and propose new aesthetic forms to narrate it.