Friday 10 April 2009

Holo Nightmares

The current discussion on the problems with archival stability in Fine Art Holography has clearly got me worried. Last night I had a classic anxiety dream that involved falling from a high building, no clothes, no money, in a foreign city and, worst of all...all my holograms were destroyed by a collapsing building! Jason Sapan said I should count myself lucky that so few of my holograms have degraded over time and, I must say, I do, hearing some of the horror stories out there. I have had occasion to break a hologram but fortunately was able to retrieve the master from the artist and have it reproduced, but I realise that most of the time that isn't going to be possible. It would appear that glass plates are more stable than film but evidently more research in this area is required. In the meantime I will probably continue tossing and turning in my sleep. Thanks, guys!

Thursday 2 April 2009

York College

 (April 2009)

Just back from installing a small exhibition in The Gallery at York College, a brand new institution on the outskirts of the historic city of York. Everyone told me how beautiful York was but I arrived at 7.30 in the evening, tired from a 4 hour drive, checked into my Travel Lodge (motel) had dinner, a couple of drinks and retired to bed with a good book. The following day we hung the show in a gallery with more ambient light than you would believe. It's on a mezzanine level above the main concourse and looking down you would think you were in a shopping mall, populated by very fashion conscious youths. A nice guy called Nick who is the Photography Technician was appointed to help me and we managed to hang 19 holograms, attach the labels to the panels and adjust the lighting in a matter of about 4 hours. The selection included work by Margaret Benyon, Inaki Beguiristain, Hans Bjelkhagen, Patrick Boyd, Yves Gentet, Ken Harris, Pearl John, John Kaufman, Liti Holographics, Dietmar Ohlman, Andrew Pepper and David Pizzanelli.

The lights were on rods attached to the top of the panels and could be adjusted up and down to vary the reference angle. It worked relatively well but will undoubtedly look better at night. I also made use of a few display cabinets that were available to display some Applications of Holography (the shiny stuff) and some Other 3D Imaging Systems (stereoscopes, anaglyphs, lenticulars). Judging by a couple of students who passed by while we were working, they will never have seen anything like this and I look forward to reading the comments book.

Job done, I got in the car and drove 4 hours back to London. Maybe I'll get to see York when I return to collect the work at the end of the show?