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Colour Conundrum combines the interests and working practices of artists Jonathan Gilhooly and Stig Evans. Drawing upon optical illusion, perceptual psychology, conjuring techniques and colour theory, the two artists have devised a responsive artwork that functions as both heuristic tool and interactive game.

Object of the Game

The participant is informed that at least two of the coloured cards (that is, the pastel-coloured, not the primary-coloured red, yellow, blue ones) are a matching pair, and is asked to select whichsoever two they believe to be a match. Now evidently, one's perception may be influenced by many factors in this instance not least by the lighting inside the cabinet and by reflected hues from the closely situated primary coloured cards but notwithstanding these dilemmas, once the player has decided, her choice of cards are sealed within an envelope.

Proceeding to the other side of the cabinet, the envelope is now opened to reveal the truth, or otherwise, of the player's acuity. She is now offered a second chance to match the two chosen cards with a pair from this second cabinet display, by which time it may be conjectured that some sort of deception or legerdemain is being perpetrated: upon this matter, however, we could not possibly remark.

Colour Conundrum origins of a parlour game

Charles Albert Keeley (1821-89), the son of a Bristol clergyman, was an inventor and amateur scientist who is thought to be the originator of Colour Conundrum. Keeley was a regular performer at the London Royal Polytechnic in the 1860's: the Polytechnic - the first of its kind - opened to the public at 309 Regent Street on 6th August 1838, under the chairmanship of the distinguished scientist and aeronautical engineer Sir George Cayley. Its aim was to demonstrate new technologies and inventions to the public. It subsequently played a significant role in the popularisation of science & engineering, and became a major tourist attraction in Victorian London. \r\nKeeley himself had been inspired by the work of French chemist and colour theorist Eugene Chevreul (whose ideas were later to have an important impact on painters such as Seurat and Delaunay) and in particular his 1839 publication The principles of harmony and contrast of colours. Keeley became fascinated by how Chevreul's ideas might be adapted to the use of coloured light (his lifetime's passion) and many of his presentations at The Polytechnic consisted of an innovative form of magic lantern display in which abstract colour slides replaced the normal representational and narrative forms. By employing geometric and repetitive patterns his dazzling projections had the effect of producing afterimages in the eyes of his audiences (it may be that Keeley was familiar with the studies of the afterimage made earlier in the century by first Goethe and then the Czech scientist Jan Purkinje).

Keeley's lantern shows were highly innovative for their time, but they did not prove popular to a Victorian audience and in the early 1870s he spent several months in America, where he produced lighting effects for the Metropolitan Opera House in New York (the electrical sun and rainbow effect are mentioned in Hopkins: Stage Illusions, Special Effects and Trick Photography, 1898). It is thought that his original prototype for Colour Conundrum, initially an idea for a parlour game, was devised during his time in America.

Artists Stig Evans and Jonathan Gilhooly have reconstructed the game from the few surviving fragments of Keeley's original drawings, notes and diagrams. This has necessitated a certain amount of conjecture on their part as to specifically how the game was originally intended to be played, as well as to the actual colours envisaged for its deployment. What the artists have attempted to do is produce not a facsimile (scarcely enough evidence survives to make this possible), but an object that is in the spirit both of Keeley's original plan and of other 19th century optical devices such as the praxinoscope and stereoscope, each of which became popular parlour games in their own right.

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