NEW ACQUISITIONS 2

Six Lines Folded was produced during the Lionel Robbins Memorial Scholarship which Andrew Pepper held at the University of Reading between 1988-89.

It was during this scholarship that he built an holography studio within the Fine Art Department of the University and began hands on research into holographic drawing, shadows, shapes and lines. These experiments formed part of the research he was carrying out for his PhD in Fine Art Holography, which was awarded in 1989.

Inspiration for a series of works, which were made during this period, came from a month in New York as Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Holography during 1987. Here he began to work with objects and ‘drawings’ placed in the reference beam when the holograms were recorded. This led to a series of ‘cube’ images which make up the five plate ‘Drawing Series’. When he returned to the UK he continued this interest in drawn and shadow surfaces to produce Square Eclipse, Drawn Corner and Cut Corner (all 1989). The ‘line’ works began to develop directly after the ‘Square’ period and a short series of individual works were made using a variety of line thicknesses and the shadows they produced.

Six Lines Folded was inspired by some earlier works Pepper had produced as a Fine Art student, shown in his BA Degree Exhibition in 1978. They were comprised of framed wooden constructions (looking very much like a framed painting), with stretched black nylon netting used to produce transparent ‘screens’ on the front and rear surfaces of the frame. Each ‘screen’ had white lines painted onto its surface. Physical lines of the same nylon material were connected to the front and back of the painted ‘screens’ so that as an observer moved past these pieces a kinetic effect took place where painted lines and sculptural lines overlapped and interacted. Six Lines Folded does something similar except there are no physical lines and the kinetic effect is due to the relationship between the position of the opaque ‘holographic’ lines and the shadows they produce.

Like many of Pepper’s works you are invited to move past them and experience a shifting pattern of overlapping ‘drawings’ and shadows. Standing directly in front of these pieces, as one might do when looking at a painting, causes them to become inactive and ‘flat’.