If you’ve ever walked into a hardware store to handpick the perfect colour for your home, you’ll know how difficult it is trying to picture how the colour on the swatch card will ultimately look on your walls – even for someone with the most vivid of imaginations.
For this reason, award-winning South African author and curator, Adam Levin, has collaborated with the Plascon Spaces Showroom to create A Meal of Colour – an exhibition as well as a series of workshops set to seduce with the magic of colour. The exhibition is open to view from 30 October 2012 until the end of the year.
“It’s born out of my real love for colour and about making people see colour more conceptually, rather than just making things bright,” says Levin about A Meal of Colour. “It was about taking colour and making it more tangible and getting people involved at the same time – making them see colour in new ways.”
But what started as an exhibition and window for Plascon Spaces Showroom has quickly turned the showroom into an art gallery – a space which, from a more abstract angle, explores a person’s relationship with colour, engaging the viewer’s senses and making them think and respond emotionally to the work.
Levin has chosen upcycling as a key theme for the exhibition and the ideal way to engage with viewers. With a growing trend in eco-friendly décor, upcycling is the ideal way to demonstrate the power of colour in new and exciting ways with the things that you can find at home or at a variety of markets.
Welcoming guests as they arrive will be a rich copper feature wall showcasing 32 plates each painted in the 32 colours of Plascon 2013 Colour forecast.
The exhibition will also feature a colourful mix of furniture and products that Levin has sourced locally, as well as developed for his shop Imagine Nation situated at 44 Stanley Avenue, Milpark as well as for African Contemporary Emporium (ACE), the world’s first broadly representative African concept store at Arts on Main in Johannesburg. Pieces include the African Cocktail Cabinet featuring a large African map, traditional Bamileike “courreges” tables that have been treated in brights; chair covers in Shwe Shwe fabric and eclectic details Levin has been creating to show what a difference paint can make.
“It’s about creating a playful and inviting space for everyone to enjoy rather than simply giving them something to look at,” says Levin.
And to make sure people get involved, Levin will be running Upcycling Workshops at R250.00 per person on Saturday 10 November and Saturday 24 November at the Plascon Spaces Showroom where participants will be able view a demonstration of Adam upcycling a piece of furniture and chatting about his travels and ideas. Alternatively, for an extra R150, participants joining his talk can also join Levin on a junk shopping experience later in November or early December.
These workshops will run from the Plascon Spaces Showroom. To book, call (011) 487 8893/4.
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