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JEFFREY ROBB -British Artist
"Amongst the best holograms I have seen in the context of aesthetic values are those by the British artist Jeffrey Robb, agraduate from the Royal College of Art in London. His holograms of abstract landscapes, for example 'Landscape 6' , are to my eye perfectly judged aesthetic objects. They display beautiful colour composition (which nevertheless looks effortless) with excellent management of spatial effects - particularly in relation to the edges of the work. This last point perhaps deserves more comment, as it appears to me that holography is particularly vulnerable in this respect. It may be that this vulnerability is undeserved in that the expectation of a well managed periphery is a carry-over from eyes and tastes accustomed to two-dimensional images - but the habit is nevertheless there and is unlikely to disappear. Robb also frames his work in a carefully simple way - ground glass 'slide-holder' type frames for the transmission pieces - here making sure that the edges are handled in a way that is sensitive to the gaze educated in other media.
In my view the best visual art is always primarily visual in appeal - visual in the sense that conceptual art, for example, is not, though obviously the intellectual pleasure involved in such art has its own recommendations. The very best art has both. On the following point, I realise that I may be on dangerous ground, as many holographers no doubt feel the same way, but I was impressed in conversation with Robb by the degree of directness and visual attention he places on the aesthetic qualities of the work. Indeed he seems fanatically involved with minute shifts in colour sequencing (as the rainbow hologram changes with viewing position) and also with the arrangement of relative brightness values and the management of hue across the composition from any one viewing position. His work would in many ways seem to have an intellectually anti-intellectual stance - or at least be anti the overt language-based conceptual involvements that painting and particularly photography have undergone in the last decade: "Things that cause a work of art to come into being or lie behind that work are often too complex to be fully elucidated"(1). His interest seems to be in a sensual involvement, and he has high expectations of the sophistication and exactness of his visual language. In his view holography has suffered "because people want to do more technically adept things as they learn about the medium, and holographers who do not do this are often criticised for not being at the 'cutting edge' technically... basically there seem almost to be too many options in holography - composition can become too chancy - you become less aware of what the viewer is seeing. People try too many things in a single piece and don't accept that there are things that you want to convey in an image - you don't need peripheral clues all the while to do that"(2)
Chris Titterinton, assistant curator in the department of prints and drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London