New location, new print work

After leaving Hong Kong in need of a break from the hectic life I first visited Vietnam and thought I would enjoy a brief sojourn in Saigon.

Exploring the city, I discovered an interesting area south of the city centre, which is otherwise an open area currently undergoing major redevelopment. In contrast to the rest of the local District, the small area I chose to study is comprised of small, tree-lined streets with many restaurants, cafes and other shops. The main reason I was attracted to this area is that while looking at a map of the area, I noticed a similarity to the grid-based drawings and prints I had been working on recently. The thought of a landscape study or even 'portrait' of the area began to develop.

I composed a plan in which colours would be collected at the intersections of the streets and overlaid on to my previous grid structure. If any colours happened to fall on the spot already occupied by a lined box, I would allow myself to move the colour to an adjacent spot. The decision of where to move the colour would be determined by my own judgement, based on the existing composition.
The overall composition would therefore be a combination of aesthetic judgement and system-imposed structure.

Notebook pages below:

I used the 'City Palette' app (which I had used before) to collect a colour at each of the 34 intersections in the area and dropped them into the grid structure I had constructed in Adobe Illustrator. I decided to move from A4 to A3 for the printing in line with my decision to gradually increase the scale of the work.

'District 7 Strata', 2018

One of the road junctions for colour collection

Collecting Colours

While working on the planning of a performative walk in collaboration with the UK-based artist Blake Morris, he introduced an interesting and useful app to me that had been developed by friends of his: Taylor and Bob Snead and Chloe Bass - City Palette.

City Palette

As my work often involves aspects of recording experiences in outdoor locations, this app was attractive and so I tried it out at two locations: Tung Wan and Nam Tam Wan on Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong. For these tests I restricted myself to 8 colours.

It quickly became apparent that it is important to set rules for its usage if colours captured in different locations are to be compared. The palette can be manipulated somewhat if the user focuses in too much on selected colours rather than recording the 'ambient' colours encountered at each place visited. However, several different ways of using it have become clear to me and I'm sure that this app will prove useful in some of my on-going projects.

The palettes recorded at the two locations are as follows:

Nam Tam Wan palette - February 2018

Tung Wan palette - February 2018