Toad on the moon

TAKE TEN takes the pink walls of Las Palmas Project Space as both material and proposition. Closely resembling Baker-Miller Pink — a colour controversially associated with calming aggressive behaviour — the existing architecture becomes the starting point for an investigation into colour as a purported tool for regulating mood, behaviour and wellbeing.

The exhibition traces this promise through a series of materials associated with soothing, healing or relief, including calamine, Himalayan salt, bismuth subsalicylate and cochineal pigment. Their apparent benignity is repeatedly complicated: cochineal requires the mass harvesting of insects; excessive exposure or consumption produces adverse effects; and the therapeutic claims surrounding Baker-Miller Pink remain disputed. Through sculpture, painting, textile and a continuously running fountain, TAKE TEN constructs an environment in which reassurance gradually becomes suspect, using humour and contradiction to question the impulse to package discomfort into something manageable, attractive and calm.