Emile barret x Southway Studio
Leporello book
26,5 x 21 CM

Funerall Football is the result of a commission by the Southway Studio to Emile Barret, created in September-October 2023. It is a photographic research project that falls within the Studio’ research around football and more specifically the Olympique de Marseille. The artist Emile Barret chose, for that collaboration, to focus his work on the funerary aspect, roaming the cemeteries of Marseille, from the Saint Pierre cemetery to the Aygalades, including the cemetery of Mazargues, and focuses specifically on the burials of football supporters and players of the Olympique de Marseille.

Southway Studio has been working on parallels and hybridizations between art history and contemporary popular culture for a few years now, notably through the exhibitions Too Fast Too Knight, Drive to Survive, as well as Yolo Maradona in 2019.

Funerall football highlights the links between a secular mythology around football, and the long-term that gives birth to myths, which now fill collective imagination and classical culture. In Emile Barret’s series Funerall Football, we perceive this blend between contemporary popular fervor and the timeless codes linked to remembrance and death. The exhibition also covers the relation between the Olympique de Marseille and football, which transcend generations and social classes, and the burial as a place of intimate memory.