Jeff Robb's 'Three Acts of Will'

I caught Jeffrey Robb's recent exhibition "Three Acts of Will" on the last day of its run at the Londonnewcastle Project Space in Shoreditch. This immense, cavernous space was apparently crammed to bursting at the Private Views but I am glad I managed to see it in the company of Jeff alone. The exhibition has a spiritual quality to it that makes one speak in lowered tones and the combination of intense light and colours in Jeff's work with the extraordinary audio composed by John Was has an almost church like feel to it.  If I had had more than an hour on the meter I could happily have spent all afternoon there, lost in blissful reverie.

The first room you enter, 'Genius Loci', contains a group of inverted pyramid shapes, like giant icicles suspended in the air. Created from lenticular panels, the imagery appears both within and outside the structures and is animated by an ever-changing video projected from tiny units in the gallery ceiling, taking the temperature from icy black and white to satanic red, and introducing a kaleidoscope of moving colours that also plays on the gallery floor to mesmerising effect.

In the second room, 'Liminal States', the works are more traditionally square in format but double sided and lit from all around with a strip of LEDs. The figurative imagery shifts shape from angelic to demonic. Glowing squares of light suspended in the void. 

In the third room, 'Coming into Being' banner-like constructions animate images of Jeff's son, drawn by his artist father, Tom Robb, the child's voice incorporated into the soundtrack.

Of course none of this is actually holographic despite what all the media insist on calling it - not that I'm particularly bothered. Jeff's "holographic sculptures" are just what people want holograms to be and without doubt are pushing the boundaries of anything I have ever seen done with lenticulars. If holography has yet to really make an impact in the realms of Fine Art, and lenticulars are still dogged by that 'winky postcard' association, this exhibition should have permanently disabled the 'naff-ometer' of anyone who managed to see it.  It just goes to show that it isn't the medium that is responsible for the bad reputation it sometimes has, just the occasional dodgy practitioner, which Jeff Robb certainly isn't.

To see some video of the installation and read an interview with Jeff, follow this link to wonderlandmagazine.com

and explore some of Jeff's back catalogue on his own website and in my personal collection.

HOLOGRAMS 2 in Rugby

Almost 4 years after 'HOLOGRAMS, the first 60 years' showed there, curators at the Rugby  Art Gallery & Museum, in the city where Dennis Gabor conceived of holography, invited me back to exhibit a selection from the follow-up show 'HOLOGRAMS 2'.

The gallery could not accommodate all the transmission works I exhibited at other venues but we selected 40 of the best pieces by an international body of holographers, including pulsed portraiture, multi-colour  reflection  and rainbow holograms, and groups of full colour Denisyuk and Digital works.

Exhibited for the first time were two pieces by Paula Dawson, made in association with Geola,

and a stunning full colour Jewel Box by Colour Holographic.

Steve Benton's 'Crystal Beginnings' was the poster image so I included a small embossed portrait of Steve at the introduction of the Rainbow holograms section.

And, as usual, I filled a couple of display cases with examples of applied holography. This time one was devoted to embossed holograms and another to dichromate and photopolymer

If you can't make it to Rugby, you can see a slideshow of the full HOLOGRAMS 2 exhibition here and if you think that your local museum might be interested in taking it, please let me know. The show must go on!

PS  Until the end of August there is also a fabulous exhibition in the main gallery : The Art of Social Enterprise, featuring contemporary recycled artefacts from the knowtrash collection.

Well worth the detour! 

Escher hologram project

The work of M.C.Escher has always appealed to holographic artists and designers, and it is not hard to see why.


Two of my favourite examples are  the 'Escher Staircase' produced by Graham Tunnadine for Applied Holographics ,

  

and Dominic Welby's 'Lizards', 

both from the late 1980s.

And of course there is Steve Benton's sublime 'Rind II', from 1978.

Now there is a new Kickstarter project, 3-D Holographic Designs inspired by Escher, from Javid Khan's Edinburgh-based company Holoxica.

So far, Holoxica has specialised in medical and scientific imaging, though one of their more recent projects, the remarkable Rhind Mummy hologram, has taken them into the museum world.

This new venture would apply the digital holographic imaging process to consumer products - holograms for the home - and Holoxica envisage a range of images in sizes from 10 x10cm up to 30 x 30 cm with lightsources to match. By pledging funds now you can hope to receive 

one or more of these new holograms before they are rolled out to the general public.

The following image, 'Starfield' is an example of what they have in mind.

There is precious little new on the market for enthusiasts of well-designed decorative holograms, so I wish Javid all the best for his enterprise and look forward to seeing the results.

Ultimate 3D moves to Taipei

Back in Taiwan last month to assist with the installation of the Ultimate 3D exhibition at a new venue in the capital Taipei. The show attracted 140,000 in Kaohsiung so we are hoping to improve on that figure.

We stayed in the very attractive W Hotel, where I had the chance to rest up and acclimatise before going to the venue.


This was the view from the bathroom, looking out towards the city.

and what I thought was a radio beside the loo, turned out to have more interesting functions

There was also some fabulous corridor art

The Songshan Cultural and Creative Park was a ten minute walk away, and located close to various other attractions. There was an exhibition of Karl Lagerfeld photographs just nearbye.

The building itself was in the Japanese style and at about 60 years old, fairly ancient for Taipei. A cavernous warehouse conversion it provided a perfect blank canvas to work on.

This time the installation crew were relaxed and cheerful, more confident of what needed to be done. You know a transmission hologram is properly lit when it casts a rainbow on the viewer's face.

Shu-Min Lin, Taiwan's best known holographic artist, had seen the exhibition in Kaohsiung and, to my delight had asked for some of his work to be included this time. We last met in 1994 at Lake Forest but I recognised him at once and was really pleased to be showing his holograms.

Mostly pulsed portraits of people, there were also glass vases containing holograms that you could look down into.

I was pleased with the way the show looked in the new venue. The lower ceiling gave a more human scale and the layout flowed more easily. 

The Art pieces are displayed in a discreet gallery of their own, but the local design team like to add graphics to jazz up other sections of the show and sometimes I think it works - as with the Richmond Holographic Studios 'Mime' hologram and the Light Fantastic 'Cheshire Cat', in the Kids Section of the show.

I had to fly home before the opening but UEG's man on the spot, Zex Yeh, sent me some of the above photos and I found this one of Shu-Min Lin opening the exhibition on the Ultimate 3D Facebook page.

Fingers crossed it all goes well and I should be back in Taiwan in the Autumn for the next leg of the tour!  It would have been nice to see more of the city, which I last visited in 1990, but I did get a chance to visit UEG's other exhibition in town - Salvador Dali, Mind of Genius!

Pearl John at the Royal Society

Pearl John invited me to join her for a soirée at The Royal Society, to view their Summer Science Exhibition, in which she had some work, and to enjoy a slap-up dinner in a marquee outside.


Discovering at the last minute that it was a black tie do, I dug my dinner jacket out of the wardrobe with some trepidation as, the last time I did, I found that moths had eaten half the trousers - requiring an expensive trip to my tailor. To my relief, this time all was well.

Pearl had been commissioned by the South East Physics Network (SEPnet) to create a series of lenticular prints, illustrating research by various scientists at Southampton University, where she is based. The subjects ranged from Supernova to Nanotubes and included one showing data from a particle collision at the ATLAS  detector at CERN which, following the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs Boson there, was generating particular interest.

Pearl is pointing at the Higgs Boson image above. And you can read more about her work and the scientists involved here.


As a non-scientist many of the exhibits went over my head, but it was a splendid occasion with the great and the good of the science world assembled, all in their best bib and tuckers, with medals worn by some. One elderly gentleman looked like an extra in a Ruritanian costume drama. Dinner was pretty good too. I had the roast leg of Sussex pork - slow-cooked for 8 hours the chef told me - followed by the cheese board and a Nutmeg Posset Tart, which was a first. It wasn't much to look at or I would post a picture, but did taste good.

Apple Tart

It is exciting to discover that the holographic gene may be hereditary. My old friend Martin Richardson's daughter Lizzie has begun to incorporate holography into her own art practice, which also includes performance and darkroom activities. Earlier this year I went to see a show at South London's Vibe Gallery which included a small sculptural piece of hers, incorporating a Denisyuk hologram, and today I went to Central Saint Martin's immense new building at King's Cross to see her degree show work.

Lizzie, AKA Apple Tart, her nom de burlesque, has created an installation called 'Holographic Cabaret: The Late Night Shop' with the atmosphere of a small carnival sideshow which you enter through velvet curtains under a sign announcing STAGE DOOR. Inside are four full colour digital holograms facing each other across the confined interior space, her fellow cabaret performers engaging with each other and the spectators from within their virtual  domains. I thought it a very effective use of holography in an unusual context and, while Apple Tart is a rare example of someone who had grown up surrounded by holograms for her entire life, her decision to use the medium herself makes perfect sense. A distinct strand of her father Martin's work with pulse lasers always had the feel of performance about it so , whether or not his daughter is consciously following in his footsteps, I can see a kind of theatrical dynasty emerging here.

Apple Tart also appears in a video work by her fellow student, Piotr Krzymowski  which, though not usually a fan of video, I found mesmerising. She kindly gave me a guided tour of her fellow students' work, pointing out some of her more interesting contemporaries. As both performer and visual artist I look forward to seeing more of the multi-talented Apple Tart.

Jeffrey Robb - Liminal State

In 1993, while Jeffrey Robb was still a student at the Royal College of Art in London, I put on an exhibition of his holographic work at Smith's Gallery in Covent Garden. Entitled "Landscapes & Metamorphoses" it exposed two strands of his work, the painterly landscape images which took the form of white light transmission holograms, and the 'metamorphoses' which used computer software to transform photographic images into reflection stereograms.
Some of his work from that period is in my collection.

Nearly 20 years later, after a prolonged stint in commercial holography, Jeff has returned to his art career and is exhibiting lenticular works internationally. Check out his website here. 

His new show at Hayhill Gallery in London's Cork Street, at the epicentre of the art trade, displays some of the finest lenticular images I have ever seen. Once a medium I somewhat looked down on, lenticular imaging has developed almost beyond recognition from the winky postcards of my youth into something that fits perfectly into contemporary art at the highest level. I am so pleased to see Jeff back where he belongs and at the top of his game.

If you are able to see the exhibition in person, don't miss the opportunity but, in any case, do take a look at the website. Both nudes and abstract works are superb!

PS Members of the prestigious Ivy Club in London's West End, can now enjoy a selection of Jeff's latest work on the walls of their 4th floor bar.  Jeff gave a talk and 3D slide show there last night and I got to interview him about his life  and work in holography and 3D.