I’m All For Yellow, 2023

In I’m All For Yellow, artist Holly Stevenson uses colour as both material and argument. The work layers pink, blue and yellow—hues culturally coded from birth to signal and regulate gender. Pink and blue operate as visual shorthand, enforcing expectation through fashion and social conditioning.

Yellow, often framed as “neutral,” becomes the work’s quiet provocation. Stevenson centres a yellow sphere, recalling an egg yolk, drawing attention to its biological associations: unfertilised, carrying an X chromosome and suspended in a state prior to imposed identity. Encircled by pink and blue, the form sits within a field of expectation while resisting absorption into it.

The title reads as playful yet declarative. Rather than rejecting colour coding outright, the artist reclaims it, proposing fluidity over fixity. The viewer is invited to imagine the yellow sphere returned to its shell—a space of possibility before categorisation.

I’m All For Yellow extends Holly Stevenson’s ongoing critique of gender stereotyping through humour, materiality and subtle defiance.

In risograph printing, each colour is printed as a separate pass through a risograph machine — a stencil-based duplicator that presses organic soy inks into the paper. Risograph inks are naturally vibrant — they are renowned for their vivid colours and evident textures. The inks are transparent so layers build to create more colours. Slight shifts in registration and a soft grain make every impression subtly unique.

I’m All For Yellow is printed on Munken Lynx natural white 170gsm, an uncoated, FSC-certified stock whose gentle warmth lets the colours glow. The edition is strictly limited to 100 and will never be reprinted. All prints were produced at the London Centre for Book Arts.