For Kathleen Herbert’s third solo show at the gallery, the artist presents a series of photograms,     A Study of Shadows,     and a film work,     Everything is Fleeing to its Presence. 

Using the early photographic process of cyanotype, Herbert’s     A Study of Shadows     series is a continuation of her interest in visibility and light through the colour Prussian Blue and the relationship between science and colour theory. In Goethe’s     Theory of Colours     he describes blue as     ‘darkness made visible.’     Prussian Blue has a unique chemical structure and was originally created through the cyanotype process. It was the colour used to measure the blueness of the sky and was also used in the UK during the Chernobyl disaster as an antidote to radiation poisoning, preventing Caesium 137 from entering the food chain. Prussian Blue also has the ability to heal itself;     if the intensity of its colour is lost through light-induced fading, it can be recovered by being placed in the dark.

Newton first discovered the colour spectrum by placing a prism in a beam of light. The white light hit the prism and split into multiple colours. He then discovered that placing a prism upside down in front of the first beam condensed the colours into a white light. For     A Study of Shadows,     Herbert coats watercolour paper in a light-sensitive solution. She then places prisms in varying compositions onto the paper before exposing it to UV light. The image is then fixed by placing the paper in water. The process is invisible and somewhat beyond control; Herbert works without ever quite knowing how the image will emerge. The resulting images appear to float to the surface from the depths of the colour, revealing the areas where the light has been impeded by the prisms; the shadows. 

Everything is Fleeing to its Presence     is a binaural sound and video installation exploring visibility through the socio-political narratives of the colour Prussian Blue. The piece has developed from a residency Herbert conducted at      The Beaney House Of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury      in 2017 and was exhibited at the New York Public Library in October 2018 as part of     Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works.

Part poem, part documentary, part autobiography, the narration of     Everything Fleeing to its Presence,     developed through Herbert’s research, explores the biological and cultural histories of this pigment through metaphors of visibility and light. In this narrative, Herbert recognises private colour perception as well as more public scientific observations of Prussian Blue and its properties. Intertwined with interviews with a chemist and the artist’s response to handling what is now regarded as the first photographic book,     Cyanotype Impressions     (1843),     the film is a more personal narrative of loss. The visuals of the film are a set of photograms on slides. Using the cyanotype process and exposing the paper for varying durations, the photograms are a series of empty tonal voids of Prussian Blue which appear and disappear whilst the narration unfolds.

Danielle Arnaud