Following on from the shadow work I’ve been doing I decided to work in some colour. I suppose it would signify the idea that our concept of the near past is often framed by the black and white media of its production, whether that’s in its photography or film. Then there are the texts written about the more distant past, whether contemporary or otherwise which, in our minds, become a blend of forms and colours as we try to picture that which they describe.
There was a moment several years ago when I found a piece of mediaeval pottery on a dig in Oxford. From out of the dark brown earth, the vivid yellow of the shard was made visible for the first time in several hundred years; seen for the first time in that great span of time. In some ways it was quite unsettling as I described in a blog in 2014.
The introduction of colour changes these ‘shadow texts’ into something else; a remembrance of things we could never have known, the memory of which we can only imagine.
