Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, London SW11 4NJ

11 – 13 July 2024

The second annual Material Engagements Research Cluster (MERC) exhibition, Colour Made Manifest, brings together practice-based and material-led academics from the Royal College of Art to highlight the world-leading research taking place under the MERC umbrella.

The overarching focus questions and offers to illuminate the paradoxical realm of colour through research activities exploring how the immaterial notion of colour can be explored and evidenced through a number of materialising projects. It also builds on staff discussions embedded within the MA and PhD group teaching this year, prompted by Neil Parkinson and the RCA’s Colour Library Collection. Through works-in-progress, finished outputs, and an attached event, Colour Made Manifest will contextualise research and create a generative space for research activities.

The work explores colour through a direct approach to the term manifest applied to a list, set of instructions or correspondence. The work is created through working direct on to the moiré side of found envelopes with a limitted pallet of 9 coulored pens. The ink adapts, evolves and changes in responds to the existing patterns and papper qualities of the envelopes initialluy sourced in Japan in 2022. The work draws reference from areas as divers as tapestry, image identification and aspects of the traditions of the Ishihara tests.

Ishiara Manifest, 2024: Coloured ink on found envelopes