Gamboge

Gamboge was created as record art for Richard for a title track about hues of yellow, including the defunct gamboge.

I created the lettering in Illustrator and cut it out in one piece - it was quite a challenge to glue it down flat and straight! I should have used heavier paper. The rest is other ephemera plus acrylic paint and ink.

The quote “When some unprocessed resinous clots were broken open during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, it was discovered that they contained stray bullets, trapped like ancient insects in amber.” is taken from The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair, published by John Murray (Publishers).

The (upside-down) Hindi script top left translates as: Raga of vehicles on the road; and adjacent on the edging: Demand for continuous movement.

This and other Indian elements are references to the inaccurate belief that the gamboge pigment originated in India – it was distributed by the East India Company but was mainly sourced in Cambodia, once known as Camboja, from where the name derived.

Mixed media collage: acrylic paint and ink, printed papers, fabric, transfers

308mm x 308mm approx, 12mm depth