FIGURING LIGHT 2009
Figuring Light: Colour and the Intangible - Djanogly Art Gallery, The University of Nottingham (14 November 2008 - 18 January 2009). Exhibition curated by Dr. Richard Davey, (Visiting Fellow, School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University). An illustrated publication (ISBN 978-1-900809-56-6) includes a forward by Professor Judith Mottram (NTU) and an essay by Davey and ‘Colour Conversations’ with each of the four artists (Duncan Bullen, Jane Bustin, Rebecca Partridge, and Richard Kenton Webb).
The invitation to participate in Figuring Light came at a point in my career when I had made a decision to reconfigure my practice. A period of reappraisal of my intentions and materials followed in which I stopped making paintings, and took an extended break from any form of printed work. Instead, I immersed myself in drawing as a primary medium, rather than as a preparatory study for a work in another medium.
The first results of this activity resulted in a group of works in which colour relationships are activated by drawn points of silver and colour pencil on gesso coated panels. Six 1 meter square and three 50x50cm drawings were exhibited as part of Figuring Light.
In these drawings colour is activated by a concentrated series of dots which when viewed from a distance, dissolve producing a fluctuating surface and indeterminate colour. What emerged from this reconfiguration was an investigation into the process of drawing as a means of generating a sensory experience of colour that explores and develops the limits of representation and a deceleration of perception.
When viewed from a distance the surfaces of Duncan Bullen’s drawings seem to move like wind rippled grass, or tide sculpted sand, shivering with luminous energy as they tease the eye with forms and colours that constantly fall in and out of focus – their proffered haloes of iridescence defying our attempts to grasp them. But stand in the artist’s space – at arms length to the gesso surface – and these nebulous, intriguing effects disappear. In their place we are confronted by something more tangible and physical – grids and chequer boards of individually drawn dots that cover the subtly tinted gesso surface with a fine net of colour… Each has its own distinctive quality, … But, however fascinating and compelling these dots are, we are soon drawn to step back and find the tipping point of wonder where the physical mechanics of the work vanish into a midst of coloured light… these drawings are a contained space of wonder in which the mesh of coloured dots drag the ineffable, intangible presence of light into the physical reality of this world to playfully dance before our eyes.… Bullen’s drawings remind us, even when we have uncovered its mechanics and discovered its physical properties, colour still brings us back to wander in wonder and marvel in mystery. The coloured marks that activate these gesso surfaces generate instances of the insubstantial, the inexplicable, the mysterious…
Richard Davey extract from ‘Figuring Light: Colour and the Intangible.
Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, Uk
