Patrick Boyd

One enjoyable task of the Summer has been cataloguing Patrick Boyd's archive, which he has left with me for safe-keeping as the weather in Wales wasn't doing it any good. Patrick has always been one of my favourite holographers - I have admired every aspect of his holographic output from the surreal/fashion images he made at the Royal College of Art, through the handcrafted stereograms produced as an Artist-in Residence in New York (at the MOH), at Tsukuba Univeristy in Japan and at KHM in Köln, Germany, to the remarkable nickel shim hologram Virtual Dialogues which we produced together in association with Applied Holographics. Patrick's holograms have always had tremendous style and humour and a peculiar Englishness that thoroughly appeals to me. If you don't know his work you can check some of it out at www.jrholocollection.com/collection/boyd.html

There were a number of early works that I hadn't seen before and a few boxes of masters which we had a fun evening going through. I snapped a couple of the images handheld as Patrick held the sheets of film in the light of a small diode laser. They are inevitably a bit fuzzy but I thought worth sharing.

The first is an out-take of a shoot he did for the British designer Zandra Rhodes, in the window of whose Grafton Street show-room in the West End of London two 50 x 60 cm white light transmission hologram were displayed in the late 1980s.

and the other is of Patrick with some of his RCA colleagues, Duncan Young, Rob Munday and Paul Newman, holding what I think he told me is a Darts Trophy. Ah, those were the days, when boys had big lasers and loads of film to play with!

I have recently begun to formulate a plan for an exhibition of Holography at the Royal College of Art, which would focus on that particularly creative decade (approx 1985 - 95) when holographers from around the world came to use the new facilities there and holography really began to look like a medium that artists could do something with. This would coincide with a show on Post Modernism the V&A museum in London is currently planning and in which they hope to include Patrick Boyd's outstanding portrait 'Lucy in a Tin Hat' alongside Richmond Holographic Studios portrait of Boy George. (In the end only George was included).

Hot Holograms and Michael Jackson

Yesterday was probably the hottest day of the year so far, and what was I doing? Installing an exhibition with dozens of spotlights and no air-conditioning - Phew!

It was a smallish show in the town of Alton, Hampshire, near the South Coast of England, where the museum is noted for its exceptional collection of ceramics and its pretty country garden. The exhibition had been booked by the local museum service and when the curator of the gallery came in to inspect my work I think he was lost for words. "This is a bit different" was all he could muster and then, looking around and spotting Inaki Beguiristain's "Delft Vase" hologram, "Nice Pot"!

The gallery has hessian-covered walls and exposed wooden beams, which give it a distinctly 1970s vibe, so not entirely inappropriate, it might be said, for some of the work in the show, which is a mini-survey incorporating 33 framed works from the late 1970s to now, and 3 display cases of varied ephemera.

Here are a few pictures of the installation:

Mixing Art with applied holography does not always go down well with the cognoscenti, but my current philosophy is that there is a need to re-acquaint the public with everything holography can do.

One of the artefacts on display is a bottle of Michael Jackson perfume with a holographic stereogram label which I believe Craig Newswanger made at CFC Applied Holographics.

I seem to remember that a life-size version was made though I never saw it. Seeing that eBay today is bursting with 'Michael Jackson commemorative hologram O2 tickets' (offered to people who had booked to see MJ play in London this month) and which are of course lenticulars, I should think that a large hologram of Michael, looking pretty much his best, would attract some serious bids.