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Colour and Metal: three commissioned paintings

Lalić’s development of painting is through an exploration of pre-existing schemes of organization of artists’ colours. In the Colour and Metal paintings this is paint and its chemical source; in the History Paintings, a Winsor & Newton paint chart; in the Landscape Paintings the name of a paint and its related place. This commission was fully funded by the Arts Council and consists of three works, permanently installed in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exeter, which was extended and re-modelled by Allies and Morrison, winning Museum of the Year in 2012.

The three latest works in the large Colour and Metal group, these multi-panel paintings juxtapose panels faced with metal with panels painted with artists’ oil colours made with pigment derived from the metal. All the Colour and Metal paintings are built on the ten artists colours derived from lead, six from iron, four from copper, three from zinc, two from chrome, two from aluminium and one from tin. The location and research into the area were the impetus for this work. South West England is known for its metal deposits and in Exeter the three works are installed so that when looking at the painting ʻLead and Ten Coloursʼ, you are facing North-West, toward the lead deposits on the Mendip Hills; when looking at ʻAluminium and Two Coloursʼ you are facing North-West in the direction of deposits of Waverlite, an aluminium ore; and with ʻTin and One Colourʼ you are facing South-West toward Cornwall and its tin mines. This was the first opportunity to locate ʻColour and Metalʼ paintings geographically. These works were identified as Pick of the Week exhibition by The Guardian (7/1/2012). The Arts Council Collection includes a ʻColour and Metalʼ painting, with many others in collections worldwide.