Whether it’s the new black or it simply chases away the blues, there is something special about the colour pink.
Roses, lollies … elephants? Then there are the idioms it colours. It’s assigned to stereotypes, politics, even. Think pink long enough and you can see what Miley Cyrus meant when she said it was not just a hue but an attitude.
Pink is powerful enough to be the sole focus of an exhibition gracing Wollongong Art Gallery until March 5 – and it would seem curator Dr Sally Gray is something of a repeat offender in that colour space.
“In the Realm of the Lotus exhibition at Wollongong in 2003, we painted the gallery walls pink and, of course, the lotus itself is mainly in a beautiful range of shades of pink,” she recalled.
“Colour has always been a part of my creativity one way or another, whether it’s the way I dress, I paint and decorate my homes, or artists I chose to work with."
Dr Gray is even susceptible to shades that might be regarded as cousins of pink, having obsessed over lilac bridesmaids dresses in a shop near her home.
“This is a colour I have never worn and have nowhere in my house but I felt totally pulled in,” she said. “I deliberately walk past this shop to be drawn again into this compelling colour.”
For Dr Gray, the exhibition draws from an “intersection of gender, sexual politics and visual culture”; it aims to invite viewers to dive into the colour, “to swim about in its ambience, to breathe in its pleasures”.
There is much to breathe in. The colour has done its share of heavy lifting over millennia, being associated with frivolity, queerness, femininity, popular culture and kitsch. Then there were the news headlines four years ago exalting it as the “world’s oldest” colour, having been discovered in rocks 1.1 billion years old.
The exhibition includes works from the gallery’s own collection, decorative arts from the Powerhouse collection, posters from second-wave feminist artists Jan Fieldsend and Marie McMahon, and works from artists Dr Gray invited for the event.
Among Dr Gray’s passions is an assertion that, as the arts emerge from a difficult pandemic period, they are not to be viewed for short-term or economic purpose.
“We need to see the arts as a national good, worth supporting for their own sake,” she said. “Creative thinking is necessary for all urban and regional life, for individual well-being and the survival of the planet. It’s that important.”
And as for a favourite colour, she has none. “I recently spent several weeks thinking what colour to re-cover a sofa in my house. It was an illuminating process of self-interrogation … what was I looking for? And what did it mean?”
Thinking Through Pink is at Wollongong Art Gallery, from December 4 until March 5
- CURATOR'S FLOOR TALK Wednesday 7 December, 11-12noon: Dr Sally Gray will share her motivations and inspiration for curating the Thinking Through Pink exhibition, while showing visitors key exhibits through the galleries. Free, all welcome
