David Batchelor's work is concerned above all things with colour, a sheer delight in the myriad brilliant hues of the urban environment and underlined by a critical concern with how we see and respond to colour in this advanced technological age. His studio is a treasure trove piled high with an endless variety of fluorescent plastic objects - clothes pegs, fly-swatters, buckets, spades, children's toys, empty bottles of household products - found in pound shops and markets in cities the world over. He combines these everyday items with a range of light-industrial materials: steel shelving, commercial lightboxes, neon tubing, warehouse dollies, acrylics, plastics and so on to produce extraordinary installations which exalt the ordinary and celebrate the lurid and trashy whilst being, in themselves, often mesmerisingly beautiful.
Batchelor has made a dazzling kaleidoscope of multi-coloured spheres appearing to free-float in space. The sculpture is created from thousands of cheap, brightly coloured plastic sunglasses, bought in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Transformed into spheres and suspended in a cluster from the ceiling of the historic space of the Metropole Gallery via discoball motors, they rotate slowly and silently, a galaxy of spinning globes, throwing pools of transparent colours across the room as they glint in the light.
The title of the work is derived from Fernand Leger’s 1924 film ‘Ballet Mecanique’ and inspired by the gallery, which was formerly the ballroom of The Metropole Hotel.
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