The Albert Drive Colour Chart is a record of favourite/significant colours selected by 72 people who live, work on, or visit Albert Drive. Collected over a period of 6 months, each contributor to the project was invited to tell me something about their favourite colour, which was added to the artwork along with a name they attributed to it. Each person directed me onwards to the next in the chain of connections – being passed between neighbours, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and family, not knowing with whom I would meet next.
The finished artwork is made up of three different elements. The first, a temporary wall painting (6mts x 4.5mts) in gallery T5, Tramway, brought together the complete collection of selected colours. (This existed for the duration of the exhibition only). The second part is a limited edition, digital fine art print on paper. This edition of 72 prints, the same number as there are contributors to the work, were individually signed, numbered and gifted to everyone involved in the project. These prints are now dispersed in and around the Albert Drive area in homes, offices, allotments, shops, community halls and places of worship. Contributors to the work included church leaders, students, shopkeepers, primary school teachers, community activists, local residents, gardeners, chefs and the Deputy First Minister of Scotland. The third part of the artwork is a hand drawn map of connections, which describes the links between everyone involved in the project - a drawing that maps our relatedness and connectivity to one another, charting a mutual topography.
Like Travelling the Distance (2005), commissioned by the Scottish Parliament & Blue Spine Collection (2010) commissioned by Glasgow Women’s Library, The Albert Drive Colour Chart continues my ongoing interest in the collective and in finding innovative, visual ways of representing methods of inclusion and engagement with a diversity of individuals and groups. The Albert Drive Colour Chart explores the dialogue surrounding Grant Kester’s thoughts on the kind of knowledge that aesthetic experience is capable of producing and the role of a socially engaged practice in the field of contemporary Fine Art. (Conversation Pieces, Community and Communication in Modern Art)
Personal narratives as well as socio-political context are invoked in The Albert Drive Colour Chart as each selected colour is thickened with layers of reference. Ann Temkin talks about the perception of colour depending entirely on adjacencies – “that in fact, colour is the most relative medium in art”. (Colour Shift, essay in Colour Chart, reinventing colour 1950 – To Today). At its core this artwork builds from this premise and explores how the most ‘relative medium in art’ can inform a relational approach to developing ideas.
Central to The Albert Drive Colour Chart is the idea of the ‘Gift’ and its role in decentralising the position/location of the artwork. Lewis Hyde in his book ‘The Gift’, says that when gifts circulate, their commerce leaves a series of “interconnected relationships in its wake and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges”. I was interested in exploring this and wondered if The Albert Drive Colour Chart might become a subtle agent of social cohesion?
Map of Connections
The Albert Drive Colour Chart Process Images
The Albert Drive Colour Chart Exhibition Images
To create The Albert Drive Colour Chart, Shauna collaborated with: Jean Gavin / Frank Norton / Pauline Slaven / Lynne McKever / George Burke / Paula Murdoch / David Martin / Joan Walsh / Donna Borokinni / Fiona Sutherland / Maggie Martin / David Black / Ella Cooper / Alison Blake / Stephen Pacitti / Clare Harker / Jennifer Bowers / Brian O'Neill / Paul Romano / Shanaz Ali / Ghazala Hanif / Karen Boyle / Calum Campbell / John Gannon / Carolyn McConville / Nicola Sturgeon / Kevin Meek / Vivian Davey / Fatima Uygun / Shaista Aslam / Katie Rowlands / Najma Anwar / Dorothy Cameron / Margaret Morran / Martin Morran / Marie MacDonald / Niamh Fitzpatrick / Ruth MacDonald / Jennifer McGeoch / Johan Persson / Nicola Persson / Maja Persson / Sheena McMenamin / Divine Kasonga / Bill McLaughlin / Bill Cahir / Viviane Hullin / Bashir Ismail / Mohammed Shafiq / Amrit Bedi / Amir Afzal / Israa Afzal / Jennifer Whyte / Joanna Fozard / Rachel Anderson / Doug Aubrey / Kiri Goss / Niamh Goss / Gemma Thurston / Danny Aubrey / Alison Leon / Rene Hetherington / Isabel Irons / Nasreen Ghafur / Charandeep Singh / Bryony Randall / Farah Khan / Paula Grant / Fozia Ali / Evelyn Lennie / Muna Sultan
Process images by Shauna McMullan and Alan Dimmick
Exhibition images by Alan Dimmick
Film by Shauna McMullan and Abigail Howkins