‘Chromaticity’
A New Art Commission for Stanhope
Ptolemy Mann has made  a series of large hand dyed and woven artworks for Stanhope.
The  series of eight 2.5m high artworks illustrate her love of Chromatic Minimalism  to its greatest extent.
Chromaticity means ‘an objective specification of the quality of a colour and consists of two independent parameters, often specified as hue and saturation.’ As seen in the colours found at the nearby Stanhope developmen,t Central Saint Giles by Renzo Piano, the artworks reveal extreme colour saturation unique to hand dyeing and weaving and tell an abstract, intuitive, visual story. This series is also a play on words…a colourful city is a glorious city and London has become a place for colourful buildings to grow in unexpected and unexplored places.
The warp and weft of the cloth becomes a macro city, with warp and weft reflecting the vertical and horizontal line of built architecture. This relationship is demonstarted by the following definition of the word architecture:
“Architecture: from the Latin, teks – to weave (as a net); also to fabricate, a root shared with text, textile, context, subtle and technology. More especially to build a dwelling with tools…â€
Ptolemy  love is creating artworks and she finds, after over 20 years of weaving, that it surprises and delights her deeply. The process and method of weaving becomes increasingly more symbolic of all creative endeavors she undertakes.
To celebrate this fact Stanhope commissioned the photographer Darek Fortas to photograph the dyeing and weaving process during the making of this work. Mysterious and complex these images reveal part of that process. She extends great thanks to the art consultants Dickson Russell for initiating and managing the commission and to the team at Stanhope for being such exceptional clients.
If anyone is interested in buying or commissioning artworks  email: info@ptolemymann.com for a current list of available artworks.
Top photograph by: Justin Piperger
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