Garden of Chromatic Disturbance (1998)

• 67%
• 1998
• Arthur Cantrill
• Corinne Cantrill

Does colour exist where there is no light? The garden is a setting for colour research: random objects are laid out in changing combinations for repeated shooting and printing with varying exposure densities and colour balances. Images of Corinne standing and sleeping in a chair evoke traditional portraits in garden settings, but here the figure's subjected to severe colour and contrast changes, and is partly obliterated by moving windblown foliage shadows in primary colours. There's constant shifting between brief monochromes, duochromes and full colour, intercut with fragments of stark black and white negative from the original separations which contrast with the strong colours. In some of the sequences there's a solidity of blackness, as in the background to a hibiscus flower, which seems to have a depth like thick velvet -in reality this blackness is the garden background with insufficient light to register on the high-contrast black and white negative.