Residual was Anpu Varkey’s solo show on portraits. The portraiture format in her work was used like a portal into a hyper-real realm of being. Contrasting hues of red, green, and yellow moulded the face and torso, displacing the ‘model’ from any recognisable place or culture. These hues were fantastical, coded within a literary text or short story; Lovecraft’s putrid green, Ballard’s vermillion skies, or the morbid ochre in Poe’s writing. Within each face languished the remembrance of another face, posthumously read in fiction or built up by the artist’s imagination. The coloured skin tones moved away from realistic representations. A rapid addition and subtraction of colour through various sittings created the form and the residue. Small strokes formed gashes in the faces so as to evade recognisability.