Duncan Bullen and Jamie Crofts Chromatic Fields

September 15th – October 23rd

Chromatic Fields is a collaboration between UK artist printmaker Duncan Bullen and musician Jamie Crofts that centres around a limited edition book. The book explores the potential of printmaking for multiple rotations and permutations, as well as shared interests in composition, notation, repetition, drawing, music and silence.

The book contains a drawing and a score: The drawing consists of points of colour arranged in patterned formations, which is rotated throughout the book by means of screen print, each time with the points of colour in a different position. The score is shown with all performance indications, staves and stems removed leaving only notes. What remains is contour and reflection. Interspersed between printed pages are blank pages as markers of silence.

The repetition of subtly different images implies an almost static temporality, in which the act of turning the page links the physical to the visual and aural.

The book incorporates a CD of ten Chromatic Fields for piano, compositions consisting of 176 single notes. These are the 88 notes of a piano played once through and then repeated. The wall-based content, to be shown in relation to the book, consists of eighteen panels of image and score that can be arranged in various permutations.

Jamie Crofts Chromatic Fields Compositions

Chromatic Fields Images

Duncan Bullen website

Duncan travelled to New Zealand with his family to be present at the opening reception at Art at Wharepuke. He gave well recieved talks to Northtec students about his work and about being an artist.