John Kinsella has worn only black clothing since 1995. “I’ve always perceived grey as active, rather than inactive”, he explained as a prelude to his recital of a selection of poems from some of more than thirty published books. Tending to treat grey, in all its shades - even black - as one multi-purpose descriptor, Kinsella added that it has featured throughout his career. From this standpoint he enacted his role as writer in the trio of writer, painter and curator who assembled to animatedly discuss the role of monochrome in art.

Christopher Cook, professor of painting at Plymouth University and contributor to the exhibition with his 2003 work “Drivetime”, rather than seeing grey as one quality to be employed for multiple purposes, was preoccupied with the variety within grey and the effects of different methods of producing the colour. For example he recounted how, after being disappointed by the grey produced through mixing black and white, he transitioned to a combination of blue and orange, which, Cook says, produces a richer finish.

In fact, Cook, was meticulous in his technical description of graphite as a medium for producing his desired grey effect. He described the process of dissolving graphite powder in resins, oils and mineral spirits to create a substance more like a lubricant than the clay-graphite complex in pencils, a substance which he said brought him “back to the medium of painting”.

It was one of many occasions on which Cook and Kinsella related highly personal accounts of their relationship with monochrome. Cook recounted an epiphany he experienced whilst doodling in the sparkly sand on the banks of the river Ganges – “the sun threw shadow from the peaks into the troughs of the sand”. Kinsella recalled dread brought about by the sight of a plume of smoke in the distance, the foreboding signal of imminent forest fires in his native Australia.

Artist and writer united at the end of an absorbing hour to express their indignation at Gerard Richter’s assertion mentioned as one of a number of attentive and conscientious prompts by poet, exhibition-curator and host Jan Munro, that “grey, the absence of opinion, evokes neither feelings nor associations”.