Woodland Fern 3
Emulsion paint on wall, 2005
In this wall drawing, the walls of the space are made to appear as an enlarged colour swatch, of the kind that people use to match colours for decorating their homes. The colour swatch incorporates the name used to market this particular shade. These paint names are supposed to suggest certain atmospheres or feelings, like Summer Medley, Spring Breeze or Woodland Fern. They often evoke nature in some way, as if you can bring some of the feeling of a summer morning in the country into your living room.
This piece takes the paint name literally at face value, forming a background atmosphere, a “green room” similar to those used in theatres and television studios to provide a calming environment for performers to relax in. The band of colour wraps around the whole space creating a faux natural setting that passes comment on the commodification of and our conceptual distance from the natural environment.
