A Look Inside 'Metron'
Tuesday 3 June 2008
‘Metron’ is up and running now, and I had a chance to catch up with the artists Annabel Ralphs and Diane Jones-Parry, who explained to me how they came to create this exhibition, and took me through the various exhibits.
Annabel Ralphs and Diane Jones-Parry began collaborating after their Ovada (then the X-Change Gallery) show in 2000, ‘Concerning Time’. This exhibition saw the very beginning of themes that ignited fascination and continue to develop, as they worked with water mills, time and measurement.
Being invited to exhibit at the Truwash laundrette in Headington got them thinking about the appropriate processes of washing and folding. At this point they also discovered the washing machine that can be seen in the exhibition, bringing to their attention older methods of washing. Delving deeper into these processes led them to find a substance that would fuel their subsequent work… the Reckitts Blue tablets, made from synthetic ultramarine, which were originally used for whitening linens and cottons.
Further exploration of this led them to find out how the pigment ultramarine came to be made synthetically. In 1828, a French chemist called Jean-Bapiste Guimet discovered how to create this by baking the ingredients china clay, sodium carbonate and sulphur at 800°c. The resulting ultramarine was used as an artist's pigment, and in the 1850s, became a basic ingredient for the laundry blue created by Isaac Reckitts in his factory in Hull. These Reckitts blue bags were carried in missionary laundry baskets to Africa and Australia where Aboriginal and indigenous people took them to add the colour blue to their palette, an exciting hue next to the previous earthy tones. Examples of this can be seen in the exhibition. Originally, the blue colour lapis lazuli had been mostly mined in Afghanistan, occurring naturally in rock. The extraction, grinding and making was a long process which made the material expensive and highly desirable, hence the need for a synthetic alternative.
The artists journeyed to Hull to visit the factory producing ultramarine. They were astounded by the rich intenseness of the deep blue colour surrounding them. An ultramarine brick taken from the factory gives an impression of this intensity. The raw materials of ultramarine are displayed on a plinth, reminding us of the beginnings of this amazing tone. Photographs capturing the atmosphere, colour and rawness of the factory greatly contrast with the clean, scientific display set up in the gallery space. Each of the raw materials have been laid out in glass cylinders, and the result of their combination is a large quantity of pure synthetic ultramarine towering over its components. Cylinders of Reckitts blue solution standing in the exhibition window will evaporate in the sun, leaving salts behind.
The wool hanging up in the window has been dyed with ultramarine, as are the knitted pieces that explore the theme of measurement. The size of the knitting needle used makes a considerable difference to the size of the patterns created despite the structure and formula being the same.
Before official measurements were invented, people relied on instinctive measures. They used various body parts, such as ‘licks’ (the space between the thumb and forefinger) and ‘spans’ (the space between the little finger and thumb) to determine how things should be placed. Today, we have moved toward a universal measurement for the sake of globalisation. There are still some remaining discrepancies however, and there is a question around notions of preciseness and accuracy. It is the edge of precision that interests the artists.
Ralphs and Jones-Parry return to their original interest in folding, another form of measurement, showing us how it is impossible for anything to be folded more than eight times. The large wooden rules displayed show older alternative ways of measurement, and have been marked with the distinctive blue pigment. They have also had two brass rules made industrially to their individual own fathom lengths, with older thumb, hand, lick and span measurements marked along the lengths.
So where will the artists go from here? “We will let our recent work settle…there are many aspects that we wish to develop”. The venue is very important, and in the future, the artists would hope to create more site-specific work. Here at Science Oxford, they will receive more of a science audience, which is a contrast to the fine art venues previously exhibited in. They would like to perhaps work with a chemist and explore these scientific qualities further. So this journey that began in a laundrette, weaving around history, ultramarine and measurement, will continue to evolve. We look forward to seeing where it takes them next!
Diane Jones-Parry and Annabel Ralphs would like to take this opportunity to thank the Holiday Pigments in Hull for access to their factory and samples of ultramarine, to Imerys and Wheal Martyn in St Austell, Cornwall for access and samples of China Clay, and to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford for background information and permission to photograph.
By Layla Mohamed, Science Oxford Receptionist and Administrator
Being invited to exhibit at the Truwash laundrette in Headington got them thinking about the appropriate processes of washing and folding. At this point they also discovered the washing machine that can be seen in the exhibition, bringing to their attention older methods of washing. Delving deeper into these processes led them to find a substance that would fuel their subsequent work… the Reckitts Blue tablets, made from synthetic ultramarine, which were originally used for whitening linens and cottons.
Further exploration of this led them to find out how the pigment ultramarine came to be made synthetically. In 1828, a French chemist called Jean-Bapiste Guimet discovered how to create this by baking the ingredients china clay, sodium carbonate and sulphur at 800°c. The resulting ultramarine was used as an artist's pigment, and in the 1850s, became a basic ingredient for the laundry blue created by Isaac Reckitts in his factory in Hull. These Reckitts blue bags were carried in missionary laundry baskets to Africa and Australia where Aboriginal and indigenous people took them to add the colour blue to their palette, an exciting hue next to the previous earthy tones. Examples of this can be seen in the exhibition. Originally, the blue colour lapis lazuli had been mostly mined in Afghanistan, occurring naturally in rock. The extraction, grinding and making was a long process which made the material expensive and highly desirable, hence the need for a synthetic alternative.
The artists journeyed to Hull to visit the factory producing ultramarine. They were astounded by the rich intenseness of the deep blue colour surrounding them. An ultramarine brick taken from the factory gives an impression of this intensity. The raw materials of ultramarine are displayed on a plinth, reminding us of the beginnings of this amazing tone. Photographs capturing the atmosphere, colour and rawness of the factory greatly contrast with the clean, scientific display set up in the gallery space. Each of the raw materials have been laid out in glass cylinders, and the result of their combination is a large quantity of pure synthetic ultramarine towering over its components. Cylinders of Reckitts blue solution standing in the exhibition window will evaporate in the sun, leaving salts behind.
The wool hanging up in the window has been dyed with ultramarine, as are the knitted pieces that explore the theme of measurement. The size of the knitting needle used makes a considerable difference to the size of the patterns created despite the structure and formula being the same.
Before official measurements were invented, people relied on instinctive measures. They used various body parts, such as ‘licks’ (the space between the thumb and forefinger) and ‘spans’ (the space between the little finger and thumb) to determine how things should be placed. Today, we have moved toward a universal measurement for the sake of globalisation. There are still some remaining discrepancies however, and there is a question around notions of preciseness and accuracy. It is the edge of precision that interests the artists.
Ralphs and Jones-Parry return to their original interest in folding, another form of measurement, showing us how it is impossible for anything to be folded more than eight times. The large wooden rules displayed show older alternative ways of measurement, and have been marked with the distinctive blue pigment. They have also had two brass rules made industrially to their individual own fathom lengths, with older thumb, hand, lick and span measurements marked along the lengths.
So where will the artists go from here? “We will let our recent work settle…there are many aspects that we wish to develop”. The venue is very important, and in the future, the artists would hope to create more site-specific work. Here at Science Oxford, they will receive more of a science audience, which is a contrast to the fine art venues previously exhibited in. They would like to perhaps work with a chemist and explore these scientific qualities further. So this journey that began in a laundrette, weaving around history, ultramarine and measurement, will continue to evolve. We look forward to seeing where it takes them next!
Diane Jones-Parry and Annabel Ralphs would like to take this opportunity to thank the Holiday Pigments in Hull for access to their factory and samples of ultramarine, to Imerys and Wheal Martyn in St Austell, Cornwall for access and samples of China Clay, and to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford for background information and permission to photograph.
By Layla Mohamed, Science Oxford Receptionist and Administrator
