the essential
Originally from Marmande, the painter Bruno Dussillol makes everyone feel the joys of Garorock through his art. His posters are exhibited throughout the festival grounds.
Bruno Dussillol is a regular at Garorock. He is one of the oldest patrons. Owner of a concession in Marmande for a long time, he was the one who supplied the quads for the Garo technical teams. “Garorock is a family story that I share with my friend Ludovic Larbodie (director of Garorock, editor’s note),” says the Marmandais. “We built and developed things together, from the time of the Parc des Expositions to the Plaine de la Filhole.”
Although the man worked in commerce for a long time, he decided to return to his first love a few years ago; the visual arts. And since his heart was never far from “Garo”, he wanted to continue to bring his personal touch to it. More artistic, this time. Last year, after throwing himself body and soul into painting, the idea came to him to take the posters of the famous Lot-et-Garonne festival and revisit them with his brush. “I take a poster with its lovely natural wash and I come and put my touch on it, with what I consider to be the meaning of Garo”, says the painter.
“The aim of my approach is to convey the festive and unifying side of the festival”
On the 2024 poster, we can see a group of four girls in front of the festival’s Ferris wheel. “It’s a photo that was taken last year,” says Bruno Dussilol. “We see four girls full of joy in front of the Garorock tower.” In the background, we can read the names of the lineup: SUM 41, The Offspring, Swedish House Mafia… The big headliners of this 28th edition.
“The goal is not to transcribe perfect reality, but to show colors, to try to transcribe impressions of the festival,” explains Bruno Dussilol, who uses a very particular process for this: screen printing. “I take the official poster, I let it pass outside so that it catches the wind, the sun, the rain and it is well washed out,” explains the artist. “Then, I come and apply my subject on it, I make a sketch then I paint over it with a knife (very fine trowel).” Result: the decorations are superimposed, and the image of the four friends is fixed forever on the canvas. As if to immortalize the spirit of the festival which, once again this year, brought together hundreds of thousands of people in the enclosure of the Filhole plain.
“We come across people hugging each other”
“We come across people holding each other, hugging each other, I think that’s great. The goal of these paintings is really to convey the festive and unifying side that we’ll find at the festival. There’s both this kind of crowd that we have everywhere around us, and the little cocoons that we recreate with our friends,” explains the artist, who is playing the game for the second year in a row. “Last year, I painted a female face on the poster, a passionate moment of a girl who was watching a concert.”
In total, around twenty posters produced in a limited series are exhibited within the festival grounds. Whether you are 20 or 40 years old, they instantly awaken memories for all the people of Lot-et-Garonne, for whom Garo is a real institution.
