Background
THE JONATHAN ROSS HOLOGRAPHY COLLECTION
Begun in 1978, my collection has evolved over the years to incorporate a wide variety of material and, in addition to the personal pleasure it provides, may be used as a source of reference by individuals wishing to learn more about holography and the many different ways in which it can be used.
Students and designers can visit by appointment to see examples of creative holography, collectors can view works from an international range of artists, curators can select pieces for forthcoming exhibitions and, in addition, I offer a consultancy service for companies wishing to use holography commercially.
When I first became involved with holography, I joined forces with a group of fellow enthusiasts to promote what we saw as a medium with great potential for both fine art and commercial applications. Our first initiative was to create a production company, SEE 3 (HOLOGRAMS) LTD., for the origination of commercial display holograms and a gallery, THE HOLOGRAM PLACE, as a showplace for what we produced and for work by other holographers around the world. The unsold stock from the gallery, Europe’s first devoted to holography, formed the basis for my collection and included work by artists working with holography, a selection of commercial images and an assortment of holographic ephemera. This diversity of material has characterised the collection as it has developed and, alongside my many acquisitions of holographic art, I have also continued to accumulate commercial artifacts, thus creating an archive which illustrates most of the ways in which holography has developed over the more than three decades in which I have been associated with it.
One of the reasons for maintaining this collection is to use it to make holography accessible to a wider audience and, as well as staging exhibitions at Gallery 286, I have also endeavoured to encourage other galleries and museums to show work from the collection, touring two large exhibitions in recent years.
The purpose of this website is to document all my exhibitions, to give a taste of what is in my collection, and to introduce it to a still wider audience by means of the Internet.
Jonathan Ross receives the Saxby Medal.