Significant Colour
Photography by Shira Klasmer
Significant Colour is an exhibition that will examine objects and artworks where colour is the first aspect that the viewer responds to, and the impact of colour, their most memorable feature.
Colour is a deeply emotive subject. For most of us it is also highly personal, we each have a unique response to colour that we develop internally through experience and association. How we feel about certain colours often has more to do with what our childhood bedroom walls were painted with than anything else. Experiences, good and bad, associated with certain colours affect our response. Josef Albers famously showed 100 people the exact same shade of iconic Coca Cola red and the resulting descriptions implied 100 different shades of that colour. We all see and relate to colour differently therefore making it an almost impossible subject to predict and define with any certainty. What can be said is that colour is ‘Significant’ for human beings. Our awareness in certain cultures of how significant is questionable but our desire to place colour in and around our environments, on our bodies and the outside of our dwellings is in strong evidence from the beginning of mankind’s journey into consciousness.
In western thinking of the 20th century Colour and its potential gravitas seems to have diminished, become secondary, decorative; deeming an object or artwork less serious or intellectual than it’s less chromatic counterparts. More recently there seems a desire to readdress this balance. Especially on the façade of buildings, a most visible renaissance is taking place where intelligent colour is being use to serve form and function and take pole position.
A more refined appreciation and understanding of colour as a tool is shaping how we use it. Recognising the importance of not just the ‘chroma’ (shade) of a colour, but its ‘saturation’ (depth and brightness) and ‘value’ (lightness or darkness) has enhanced its role within art and design. Scientific colour tests reveal that often it is the saturation of a colour that we respond to rather than the colour itself. A very intense and saturated blue can be much more energizing to the heart and mind than a dark, somber red, defying the common notion that blue calms and red stimulates. Colour is a powerful tool capable of affecting emotional wellbeing and intellectual motivation.
‘Significant Colour’ presents a diverse selection of objects and artworks; furniture, lighting, graphics, architecture, photography, textiles and jewellery each exploring these principals in a unique way. These works are not merely about being ‘colourful’ but engaging the viewer to think more deeply about why they employ the colours they do and the implications behind their nuances of tone, shade, material colour, surface and application. Some play with process and substance, others with scale and emotion but they all reveal and celebrate the significance of their colour.
Ptolemy Mann February 2009
SIGNIFICANT COLOUR @ ARAM
This multi-disciplinary exhibition will include furniture, photography, textiles, jewellery design, graphics, lighting design, architecture and fine art. Exhibiting are: dRMM, Ori Gersht, James Goggin, El Ultimo Grito, Sauerbruch Hutton, Ptolemy Mann, Olivier Droillard, Mah Rana, Sophie Smallhorn and Christian Zuzunaga.
The Aram Gallery is an independently curated space that encourages and promotes understanding of contemporary design, by presenting experimental and new work with a special interest in the work of designers and artists in their early careers.
Guest Curator Ptolemy Mann
Curator Daniel Charny
Assistant Curator Ellie Parke
Director Zeev Aram
Kindly supported by the Arts Council England
