Six Times Seven

Six Times Seven is an exhibition of new dot paintings by James R Ford, each of the six paintings featuring seven dots.

The total number of dots in the exhibition will be 42, which was the fabled answer to the “life, the universe and everything”, according to author Douglas Adams. The artist has previously mentioned, sardonically, the idea of someone finding the cure to cancer in the arrangement and colours of the dots, so why not the meaning of life? These works continue Ford’s interest in phenomenology and the search for, and creation of, meaning.

42 is a significant number throughout culture, religion and technology. 42 is the ASCII code for the asterisk symbol, translating to anything or everything (as can the experience and interpretation of the dots). The angle at which light reflects off water to create a rainbow is 42 degrees (the dots can be all and any colour imaginable). 42 is the number of generations from Abraham to Jesus Christ (people often see the face of Jesus in a sliced tomato or piece of toast) and the artist was 42 years old when he started using larger, coloured dots in his works.

The works in the exhibition have ambiguous titles taken directly from quotes in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic, The Most Massively Useful Thing, Mostly Harmless, Not Entirely Unlike, This Will All End in Tears, and For a Moment, Nothing Happened.