A palette is
a range of colours. It can be an object that is used to house colours, and a
surface to mix colours.
It is a resource, a tool, a beholder of alteration
and a facilitator for creation.
In computer
graphics, a palette is referred to as the set of available colours of which an
image can be made. With colour profiles available on our software, our colour
perception can relate to how we view on our screens. With commitment to the device, screens can infuse the way we perceive, and in return, redesign our
visual understanding of it. With analogue film apps you can choose your film
without buying it, choose an era, and recreate an old memory. On Snapseed, you
can auto remove the background of a subject and replace it with ‘a better’ one,
or with One Tap Beauty Make-up Editor you can perfectly face-tune your selfie.
Modify your body with Youcam, and airbrush imperfection...
Tools
are companions.
Thinning,
smoothing, enhancing and reducing are all tied in with ways images are altered through ‘retouching’. From representations of events, bodies and
products to food and location; our ever-changing tools provide us with access to
morph realities.
Gesturing towards the plasticity of the medium, Working Palette is an ode to the craft of
hand retouching, and the work of retoucher and teacher Kevin O’neill.
Hand
printed as black and white photographs and hand retouched; a range of colour
blending techniques, brushwork and physical retouch masks have been used to make this work. Focusing on the
interaction between hand and image, subjects involved are
retouching products once readily available on the market, and the borrowed
palettes of Kevin O’neill. Building up colour
and working on these prints with photographic dye, the objects themselves become
responsive, living. Seeping in and out of the frame, areas are left unfinished, and others, embellished.
