Colourfield

Colourfield, Kew Gardens, 2018.

This work was part of The Wonder Project. With co-artist, Vicky Long, I created a publicly-engaged artwork that spanned 8 evenings at Kew’s garden in Wakehurst. Time spent researching with Kew scientists led us to create an archive questioning individual perceptions of colour and encouraging visitors to the Wakehurst site to engage microscopically with their surroundings.

We installed recording stations across the gardens where visitors found cards with viewfinders punched into them. We wanted them to find and look closely at a colour - almost like identifying a pixel.

They were invited to make a written description of that colour but without using any traditional colour names.

These were then deposited at the Colourfield Laboratory where we collected thousands of descriptions in an ever growing and changing live archive.

Having added their own description to the archive, visitors could then view and choose somebody else's - one that resonated with them or suggested something they thought they knew. This choice was then re-interpreted into a colour swatch using watercolour paints creating an archive of re-imagined colours which were displayed in a parallel ever growing Colourfield.

Each description and responding colour were catalogued so they could be re-matched in the future. Some descriptions were interpreted many many times, often with very different results.

The project happened during a heatwave, interspersed with two days of torrential rain. The descriptions responded to the very particular conditions seen and felt at Wakehurst during those eight days. They have become an archive not just of colour and differences in perception, but of temperatures felt, qualities of light seen and permeating scents found only there and only then.

The project was generously sponsored by Windsor and Newton who provided all art materials.