“It was always blue, right from the beginning”

(Helen Chadwick)

How can we think of nothing without thinking of something.

Dust, sky, space, vacuum, black, white, purity, emptiness, zero, neutrality and air often become the closest means of expressing an idea of nothingness. After all, with an understanding hinged on ideas of ‘something’ how can ‘nothing’ be understood any way other than the nearest expression of the unknown and unknowable.

This series was formed from an interest in how we might understand ideas of ‘nothing’, and edges of nothing such as trace and colour, beginning with the colour ‘white’. As anyone who has compared white paints will know, each shade is incredibly different to the next, leaving one to wonder perhaps which is more ‘neutral’, ‘blank’ or even ‘nothing’.

In a conversation in 2005 Mark Wigley told of a fascination with how the colour ‘white’ interacts with other colours and how the colour ‘blue’ is often added to make the white appear more white.

As Carol Mavor and William Gass amongst so many have examined, the colour blue carries a fascinating weight of associations – from sex, love and death to memory, the body, emotions, the sea and even social standings.

We might wonder how a colour so thoroughly embedded in the ‘something’, existence and trace or evidence might somehow add something to our understanding of ‘nothingness’ – and make a ‘nothing’ more ‘nothing’?

Perhaps we can begin to explore ‘nothingness’ with the medium designed to show us ‘something’.

Zero

Empty

Vacuum

        Neutrality

        Sound

        Absence

        Silence  

                     Black

                     White

                             Air

                             Sky

                             Space

                             Dust

                                                                    Unknowable