Holographic drawings, volumes and site specific installations

25 May 2003 – April 2004

An exhibition of thirteen 10 × 8 inch reflection holograms, produced over the past fifteen years, and an installation, Sight Lines Wall, ran along several metres of the exhibition space in the Butler’s Beecher Wing, part of their Center for Technology in the Arts.

Challenging the viewing norm.

Because the technology and effect of holographic images are often so overwhelming and unfamiliar (when compared with more traditional forms of art), holograms tend to be framed and hung in straight lines on gallery walls. This method offers the unfamiliar viewer a reassuring reference to art (and ways of showing it) with which they are more accustomed.


Perhaps it makes it easier to appreciate or accept holography.

In Sight Lines (made for a solo show at Gallery 286, London), the holograms had been taken off the wall and placed horizontally, hanging just above the floor. Prior to being installed in the gallery, each of the hanging metal surfaces had been allowed to rust out in the open, arranged in a straight line.


There is an environmental and physical continuity between each metal surface and the pattern of rusting it has received. Each of the small circular holograms contains images of liquid, the shadows of which exist just above the surface of the glass that holds the holographic disc.

Like the pattern created by the rust, these shadows could not be predicted. The liquids used on the metal, and during the recording of the hologram, have drawn their own marks over the surfaces.


This reference to drawing is a common and recurring element in Pepper’s work. The metal sheets are the dimensions of half a sheet of A4 paper – an accessible size found all over Europe. Something people write on, draw on, photocopy on, laser print on. Here, the size has been divided along the longest length to produce a shape onto which long lines could be drawn.

Each circular hologram was selected to resonate with the pattern of marks on the rusted metal sheet. They are subdued – green/brown, red – and form an integral part of each metal rectangle, not simply surrounded by a frame to make them convenient to display.