The Texture of Colour

Texture of Colour sees a set of personal experiments that began after the self-analysis of my wardrobe, for I had fallen into the trap of chromophobia, the fear of colour. Yet the fear was not to dismiss my love and appreciation for our colourful world, a brightly coloured front door will always catch my attention and I have an appreciation for colours in the everyday such as the shiny red of post boxes or the neon orange of traffic cones that sit in our roads. I too live in a colourful world, my house is filled with turquoise doors, my mum’s baby blue car matches both the front door and the windowsills and a multi-coloured landscape wraps our dining room wall. Yet the fear belonged to my clothing. The fear that wearing bright colours may say too much about my personality, opening up the ability for judgment purely based on wearing an all-pink outfit, leaving me to reach for blacks, whites and greys as an act of blending in. Clothing is colour's most portable form and with that, it was the most obvious choice for me to begin experimenting with.

 

I aimed to break down my own chromophobia. Although I am not totally fearing of colour, it relates back to the idea of how I want to be perceived. I too get trapped by societal rules for coloured dressing, for I will willingly wear a pop of green but to dress head-to-toe in one bright colour ultimately fills me with fear. To challenge this, for 8 days I dressed up in 8 different monochromatic outfits, undertaking a ritual-like outing of the same route with the same photographic techniques.