Chromotopia
The history of Colour, Pigment and Colour Technology accompanied by art.
Curated by David Cole and Louis Blyton
Tacit Gallery Melbourne 2017
Each artist was asked to briefly answer two questions. Here are my answers:
1) Why did you select this colour to work with?
Piet Mondrian hated green. He called it the colour of decay, so naturally, I sometimes
redress the injustice by insisting in using green in painting. Personally, I prefer turquoise
and aubergine but the idea that a single colour represents something bad seems horrible
wrong, so when green is badly treated, I feel the need to respond. I like all colours, even
the artificial and iridescent ones.
2) If this colour had a personality, what would it be?
Green is a “criminal” type, unjustly convicted and sentenced to transportation, longing for
the verdant hills of its English home while slowly turning into that peculiar colour, “leaf
green” under harsh Australian sun. Chained slave-like to Australian impressionism, it
would live amongst yellow and red ochre, burnt umber and tiny smudges of charcoal
black, flake white and with just a dash of cobalt “sky” blue. Finally it would be released
and take on a small and very flat selection in early modernism, where it would sit until, in
a fit of gaudy nostalgia, the memory of its past was revived in Op Art, only to have its
hope hastily dashed in colourless, over-coded contemporary and conceptual art. Poor
green, falsely convicted and now an outcast, unlike its cousin Blue, it fails to sell and sits
alone in the gallerist’s stockroom waiting for a friend, repressed, dysfunctional and
helpless - it has become an introverted, alienated and above all, “coloured."
The history of Colour, Pigment and Colour Technology accompanied by art.
Curated by David Cole and Louis Blyton
Tacit Gallery Melbourne 2017
Each artist was asked to briefly answer two questions. Here are my answers:
1) Why did you select this colour to work with?
Piet Mondrian hated green. He called it the colour of decay, so naturally, I sometimes
redress the injustice by insisting in using green in painting. Personally, I prefer turquoise
and aubergine but the idea that a single colour represents something bad seems horrible
wrong, so when green is badly treated, I feel the need to respond. I like all colours, even
the artificial and iridescent ones.
2) If this colour had a personality, what would it be?
Green is a “criminal” type, unjustly convicted and sentenced to transportation, longing for
the verdant hills of its English home while slowly turning into that peculiar colour, “leaf
green” under harsh Australian sun. Chained slave-like to Australian impressionism, it
would live amongst yellow and red ochre, burnt umber and tiny smudges of charcoal
black, flake white and with just a dash of cobalt “sky” blue. Finally it would be released
and take on a small and very flat selection in early modernism, where it would sit until, in
a fit of gaudy nostalgia, the memory of its past was revived in Op Art, only to have its
hope hastily dashed in colourless, over-coded contemporary and conceptual art. Poor
green, falsely convicted and now an outcast, unlike its cousin Blue, it fails to sell and sits
alone in the gallerist’s stockroom waiting for a friend, repressed, dysfunctional and
helpless - it has become an introverted, alienated and above all, “coloured."
