Holography Exhibitions from the 1980s to Gallery 286

Display holography has always been as much about how it is shown as how it is made. Unlike photography or print, a hologram can’t simply be hung on a wall, leaving the lighting to chance. It must be illuminated, angled and viewed under carefully controlled conditions to reconstruct the recorded wavefront. These physical constraints make the exhibiting of holography as much to do with where it is being shown as it is about what is being shown.

After the museum-scale holography shows of the 1980s, the medium moved out of blockbuster institutional spaces and into smaller, more intimate gallery settings. Few spaces exemplified that transition more clearly than Gallery 286, the London home of exhibitions drawn mainly from the Jonathan Ross Hologram Collection. Now, with the gallery’s website simply announcing, ‘GALLERY 286 HAS CLOSED’, that chapter too has come to an end ¹.