AHRC Fellow: David Batchelor, Curating Contemporary Art

Amount awarded: £52,500

Duration of appointment: 2001–4

David Batchelor, Senior Tutor in Curating Contemporary Art, was awarded an AHRC Creating and Performing Arts Fellowship to research the transformations in the experience of colour that have occurred with the development of new materials and their application in contemporary art. His art practice combines brilliant colours, using sources such as fluorescent light and plastics, with a range of found light-industrial materials. His book Chromophobia, published in 2000 as part of the project, analyses 'chromophobic' and 'chromophilic' pulses in art theory and criticism, architecture, film and literature, and argues that there is a tradition of resistance to colour in the West that can be traced back to antiquity and which remains evident in contemporary culture.