Friday Salon: Colour Clash

This Salon takes Tom Hudson's experimental colour teaching at Cardiff College of Art in the 1950s and Richard Hamilton's investigation into colour within his teaching of Basic Design during his time at Newcastle University as a starting point, to explore the role of colour in contemporary art practice today.

Through exploring themes of perception and illusion the Salon seeks to question what implications the ranges of traditional and non-traditional media used by contemporary artists have for understanding the selection and specification of coloured materials [1].

Speakers include Esther Leslie (Chair), Adham Faramawy, Rhys Coren and Richard Healy.

Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Her publications include: Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (Pluto, 2000); Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002). Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005), Walter Benjamin (Reaktion, 2007) and Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014).  She is currently writing a book on liquid crystals. She runs a website together with Ben Watson: www.militantesthetix.co.uk

Rhys Coren (b. 1983 Plymouth, UK) lives and works in London, UK and is currently studying at the Royal Academy Schools. He is co-founder of bubblebyte.org and welcometocorfu.co.uk. Rhys has exhibited in both V22's Young London exhibition and Bloomberg New Contemporaries, as well as at SPACE, Seventeen Gallery and The Sunday Painter, London; Spike Island, Bristol; The Royal Standard, Liverpool; Malgras|Naudet, Manchester; Grand Union, Birmingham; Gloria Maria Gallery, Milan; RISE, Berlin; and 319 Scholes, New York.

Adham Faramawy (b. Dubai 1981) studied his undergraduate degree at the Slade School of Fine Art, completing his postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 2013. Adham works in several media including painted wall works, sculptural plinths, videos, prints and computer programs. Recent exhibitions include, Hydra, Cell Projects, London (2014); Silica, Galerie Sultana, Paris (2013) and Bloody English, OHWOW Gallery, Los Angeles (2014)

Richard Healy lives and works in London. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008. He has exhibited widely throughout the UK and Europe. Recent exhibitions include - Prone Positions (solo), Rowing, London (part of Repeat Reverse) (2013); Vetiver (solo), Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam; But Mr Architect! (solo), Furnished Space, London (2012); Strategies for Building (solo), Outpost, Norwich (2011); Shapes and Things (with Gemma Holt), Sierra Metro, Edinburgh (2010); Broken Replica (with Tom Smith), Stanley Picker Gallery, London (2009).

[1] Judith Mottram Contemporary artists and colour: Meaning, organisation and understanding in Optics & Laser Technology, 2006 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030399205001039).