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Discovering the City’s Hidden Colours
Shared by Olle Helin | Traced by Jessica Warboys
Image courtesy Olle HelinIn this course, you get to uncover hidden colours of the city through experimental walks and alchemical processes. Participants will experience the full production chain of how paint is made, sourcing raw materials from local surroundings and transforming them into vibrant paints. These detours will give new meaning to colours, enriching them with personal experiences and relating them to local context – qualities often absent in commercially produced paints. It also introduces new ways to explore and engage with the urban landscape.
The course will start off with a colour walk – a journey inspired by the dérive, where you let colors intuitively shape the route, rather than habits or logic. Perhaps traces of dirt will lead to forgotten corners of the city, or maybe you’ll find sand beneath the asphalt. The discoveries made during these walks will determine the outcome of the course. The process might involve physical refinement by crushing and sedimentation, chemical experiments with organic matter, as well as historical research and discussions. By the end of the week, participants will ideally have created their own usable paints. No prior experience is necessary – just curiosity and a willingness to experiment.
Olle Helin explores the fundamental components of painting, and for several years he has devoted himself to making paint from scratch. Instead of buying factory-made paint in the art store, he goes on long walks, mostly in urban areas, and collects raw materials that are transformed into paint in the studio. It is experimental work that often leads to unexpected results. The detours to painting lead to new impressions and new encounters (with people, places, materials), and the resulting works of art carry all this with them.
Jessica Warboys was born in Newport, Wales, UK, she studied at Falmouth College of Arts, Cornwall and The Slade, London, and is currently based between Bergen and Berlin. Warboys practice moves between painting, language and moving image, where landscapes and bodies collaborate to explore ecosystems, identity, hope and the poetic. Since Spring 2023 Warboys has been a professor in the Painting Department at KMD, University of Bergen.
