Legislated Colour

Two colours, one format

“To legislate” means to “to control, create, or cause something by making laws.” For this exhibition, the artists of co-LAB-orate enacted a law restricting us to one randomly chosen colour (a colour chip from Benjamin Moore’s 2047 series) and one agreed-upon colour (quinacridone nickel azo gold), plus black and white.

The process

We began working on paper squares, exploring what was possible within such a restricted palette. We traded squares and created pieces in response to one another’s work. The unfolding of this process revealed such a richness and variety of response that we moved on to larger pieces, using a variety of traditional and non-traditional materials and techniques. Featured are a variety of marks made using brushes, sticks, stamps, rubbing, collage, and embossing.

Artists' video from August 2016. Legislated Colour was at Martin Batchelor Gallery, August 6 - 27, 2016.