IN THE PINK

18 March - 12 May, 2023

In its hardness and its softness, pink is frothy, piquant and delicious, and we are delinquent hearts when we remain unconscious of pink’s complexity and dynamism.
—-Joanna Frueh, ‘The Performance of Pink’, 2003

In the Pink, the third exhibition at Parlour, explores the arc of representation of the colour pink, from the virginal to the hyper- sexualised— all that is in between and beyond. Parlour is thrilled to present paintings, watercolours, sculpture, photography, jewellery and functional objects by sixteen contemporary artists and designers living across the UK, France and Germany:

Hawazin Alotaibi, Charlotte Colbert, Darcey Fleming, Susie Green, Sarah Illenberger, Alexander James, Sandra Lane, Hannah Lim, Roy Mordechay, Mitchell Moreno, Candida Powell-Williams, Alicia Radage, Anna Skladmann, Harley Weir, Zoe Williams

Pink is replete with metaphor, its spectrum of hues carry vast and divisive meaning. Equally revered and abhorred, the colour straddles dichotomous qualities: artificial and natural, pure and vulgar, fragile and punchy, soft and hard. Since the mid-twentieth century, pink has been frequently employed in the West to symbolise ‘femininity’. Yet, even within the allocation of the colour to a gendered embodiment, there are further double meanings, each shade possessing its own cultural connotations. Pink is a charged colour. The artworks and objects in this exhibition play on the complexity of the colour to collapse binaries and reclaim agency of its story.