Holly Davey
Charcoal is the Colour of Absence
The Newbridge Project, Gateshead, 2018
Charcoal is the Colour of Absence, was included in a group exhibition as part of Dialogues 5 mentoring project. The text (below) was read as a live performance alongside the wall drawing at a sharing event.
Drawing 3:
A drawn line of a shape, across the wall and a piece of paper. Grey in colour.Painted on, the marks are the rub between two places. The line is where they meet. One edge against another. The outline of an object is its name. We don’t need its detail. We can remove colour, all describing words, move into greyscale, and look at its edge. Like a map, our eye follows its path but we are led nowhere.We are in a cul-de-sac of looking.
It feels uncomfortable here. Confused.
The soft greys are muted, delicate, rough. Up close you can see the gradient and the subtle shifts between dark and light. There are moments when it almost disappears. Completely gone but for a tiny fragment of pigment that if rubbed turns to an almost white.
Drips slip down the paper taking our eyes to the floor and bring us back into reality. The moment it was made. A loss of control.
The overlays create a dance of lines. Intermingled. Almost touching but not quite.Layers of white silhouettes creep on top of each other. We can’t see where they meet or merge. These watercolour gestures are shadows. A map of another world where nothing has a name or a meaning.
These marks are the colour of absence.