It is the ability to deconstruct and present the concentration of colour
patterns in our surroundings that makes him stand out among those
prominent in this genre of art, writes Umer Nangiana


There is colour all around us and we see it. Or do we?
In all likelihood, there is colour we come across everyday but do not see, perhaps involuntarily. David Batchelor however, has a sharp eye for it — and through his art, he would let us see the same vividness in life that we otherwise, probably just pass by.
In other words, he would make us see colour where we would normally just see the object and perhaps, move on.  
Batchelor, the Scotland-born UK artist, is renowned for his sculptural installations that he creates from ordinary objects: from factory scrap to disused and broken items seemingly as trivial as empty bottles and shelving boxes found in the streets of London, where he lives these days.
It is this ability to deconstruct and present that concentration of colour patterns in our surroundings that makes him stand out among the array of artists who have achieved prominence in this genre of art.
And for Batchelor, this romance with colours and the realisation of the existence of colours in the most unexpected places occurred to him accidently.
“It was one of those moments in the studio when I was trying to make a sculpture and it was not going very well. You often get to that point where you get a little desperate and, in that state, you do something. In this case, I stuck some bright pink on one face of the sculpture,” Batchelor tells Community.
“But I didn’t do it with a colour in mind. I did it as a means to sort out a problem. But when I did do it that alerted me to the strangeness of colour and that (element of) surprise. Quickly, it made me look at the colour more carefully,” says the artist after his talk at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar (VCUQ) recently to conclude his exhibition ‘Flatlands Remix.’
The exhibition brought to the Doha audience Batchelor’s intricate and vibrant drawings, as well as his more recent exploration into painting.
Held in partnership with the British Council as part of the British Festival 2015, the month-long exhibition was based on the artist’s recent solo exhibition ‘Flatlands’ (2013), which was guest-curated by Andrea Schlieker with The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Spike Island, Bristol.
Plunging into the world of colour, Batchelor realises it is a limitless world.
“I think colour is literally indescribable. We see it all the time, we live with colour, we live in colour and even when we dream, we dream in colour. Colour is around us all the time and yet we don’t really know what it is,” says the artist. 
He goes on to say there is even an argument between artists, between scientists and neuro scientists and philosophers about what is colour. Is it in the object that we see? There is no science that could prove that.
Just like we created language to communicate, colour is almost entirely our side language, believes the master sculptor who has his own distinct style in erecting neon-lit columns, creating shapes out of unlit clusters and giving meaning to mere spherical shapes.
Some of them, made of copper wires and at least one of them weighing 70 kilogram, were on display at Flatlands Remix.
“We can distinguish between almost 10 million different colours. We have about 11 basic tones with which to describe colour. So there is a huge asymmetry between what we see in colour and what we can say about it,” says Batchelor.
About Flatlands, he says all these works are literally flat, the drawings and the paintings, but they also generate the illusion of depth. “I think that is the case with almost any art and I guess what I liked doing with that work is both referring to that flatness but also disrupting it,” he adds.
Probably no work is just flat. There is always some sense of space or one element in front of the other. There is something that always breaks the literal flatness.
So in his work, what is he after, form or colour?
“I never quite know, it is both, definitely both. I would not make these works if it was not for deploying colour, but at the same time, I think that colour has to have a form. It is not just one thing. It is always different things in tension with one another; the form and the colour, the flatness and different type surfaces,” alludes Batchelor.
The idea behind paintings in the Flatlands Remix is to render work which invites the viewer to encounter colour as the first thing. They are not just brighter coloured objects — rather the subject is colour. There is an opportunity to look at colour without looking at anything else.
“They are not just pure colours, they are organised into forms and I guess they are also about relationship between painting and sculpture. They are two-dimensional works, but nominally they depict three-dimensional things,” reasons the artist.
Batchelor just pours the colour, he doesn’t brush it out. Its surface most resembles that moment when you open the tin. Paint always looks best when you open the tin. It has liquid, prestine and intense colour. Batchelor has always looked to reproduce that quality and by not interfering much, he says one has a better chance of retaining that vividness.
There are certain elements in the entire process of creation that are not in any artist’s control. They just appear opposed to what he intends them to look like. But this loss of control is not entirely uncontrolled either.
“In a way, you lose control in a controlled environment — it is degrees of loss of control. Even if I am working on a piece of paper or a card, in a way you can lose control within that piece of paper, but it is still within that piece of paper,” points out Batchelor. 
“Well, sometimes the work does go beyond the paper or the card, (but) even then it is tension between order and disorder, between what you are trying to do and what happens, between control and lack of control,” he suggests.
“If you can protect surprise that would not be a surprise. You have to wait for that element of surprise and it does not always come but when it does come, you know it and know how to exploit it.”
As an artist, the sculptor and painter, says one has to be open. One has to be close to the surprise when it occurs.
When he started as an artist 30 years ago, Batchelor had not seen he would be what he is today.
“I might have hoped that would be the case, but when I was at art college if you would have asked me to describe the kind of artist I thought I could be, it wouldn’t have looked like this and I am glad at that,” he explains.
“It would have been terrible if I could predict 30 years ago, what it would be like, but as I said, the biggest surprise was when I started working with colour.”
It is the UK-based artist’s first visit to Qatar and it is the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) that has impressed him. “It is one of the most brilliant experiences I have had at the museums for a long time. I always go to museums for obvious reasons, but to see so many works based in colour, abstraction and pattern is just wonderful,” he says. 
He hopes to return to the Gulf region with an upcoming exhibition in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.