For Purgatorio, Dean has made large-scale photographs of the negatives of jacaranda trees, which she photographed while in Los Angeles. The trees, which bloom May–June in hot climates, are remarkable because the entire foliage turns into purple blossoms, without any sign of leaves. Printing her photograph as a negative, Dean saw that the purple became an otherworldly green. The background streetscape has been muted by white pencil worked over the photo’s surface. Paradiso is represented by a set of ten handprinted screen prints developed from film stills taken from the 35mm film the artist created for this movement in the ballet. The prints are expressions of pure, almost hallucinatory colour, each one relating to a different heavenly body through which Dante described Paradise in his poem.
Frith Street Gallery
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