FOUR decades worth of a Scottish artist’s work is set to be the kaleidoscopic highlight of Compton Verney Art Gallery’s Summer of Colour.
‘David Batchelor: Colour Is’ will take centre stage from Saturday June 25 as part of the south Warwickshire-based art gallery’s extravaganza on artists’ use of colour, running throughout the year.
The 66-year-old artist has been concerned predominantly with colour throughout his long career and works in a whole host of media, including sculpture, installations, drawing, painting, photography and animation, all of which will be on display.
‘Colour Is’ features some 200 pieces of art work. These include a suite of paintings made from household paints, Dog Days – seven sculptures made from large balls of coloured electrical flex, an ongoing group of sculptures – the Concerto series, in which brightly coloured objects are embedded in blocks of raw concrete, Covid Variations – paintings and collages made during the pandemic, and a recently completed tapestry that was woven in Mexico.
And the exhibition will be topped off with an artwork that gives the show its title – a glowing animation in which numerous statements that begin with the words ‘Colour is…’ revolve in a continuously changing colour-saturated animation. Each sentence is a pronouncement on colour made by a leading artist, writer or philosopher, including the likes of Wassily Kandinsky and Henri Matisse.
He has also written a number of books, including Chromophobia that looks at the changing Western attitudes to colour.
The artist told the Observer: “This is the first opportunity I have had to exhibit the full range of my colour-based work, which now spans over thirty years. It is also the first time I have shown examples of work I made in the 1980s, before colour entered my studio. The experience of looking back at over forty years of drawings, collages, paintings and sculptures, is a strange one: often surprising, sometimes rewarding, and occasionally embarassing.”
Julie Finch, Director CEO of Compton Verney added ‘Colour Is’ would appeal to a wide-range of gallery visitors from students on creative courses and art teachers in local schools and colleges, to families, thanks to the playful nature and aesthetic appeal of Mr Batchelor’s work.
The ‘Colour Is’ exhibition will run at Compton Verney until October 2.
