Brighton Palermo Remix

David Batchelor's latest site- specific light installation in the Regency Town House combines the building’s period architecture with Sicilian street festival decoration. Batchelor is known for his fascination with colour and the urban environment. This combination of everyday city themes and importance of colour makes Batchelor's work very relevant to me. After attending his talk at the Old Courthouse, where he read passages from his book Chromophobia in which he opposes the suppression of colour in western culture by artists and theoreticians, I realised how contradictory his approach to colour is.  On one hand he ridicules the urge of modern artists and theoreticians to control colour and jokes about the "black & white contemporary art", and on the other hand he mainly uses ready- made coloured lights that come in 6 colours, household paint and already coloured everyday objects from pound shops. When asked about this restricted palette, the artist himself said that sometimes it is "nice" to restrict oneself in the colour matters. I guess the power of colour remains undeniable.