Selected Works 1980 - 2008

 

John Hurrell is recognised as one of New Zealand’s leading critical voices of contemporary art and is the founder of the web forum, eyeCONTACT. He is also a pioneer in his conceptual approach to painting. Beginning in the early 1980’s, Hurrell used a system of grids within maps to create process-driven imagery. Saturating found maps with an opaque ebony field, layers of information are blotted out to reveal striking capillaries of streets and alleyways. Later works feature alphabet pasta, which are arranged on a painted support to create manipulated texts from sensual moments in well-known novels.

 

The earliest works in the exhibition from 1981 are pivotal in identifying John Hurrell’s signature use of maps and interest in text. In Conceal to Reveal, selected street names on the indexical listing have been painted out while those streets are physically revealed on the city map. This playful inverse relationship uses a pre-established method in abstracting the original imagery and is notable for its untraditional engagement with the medium of painting for this period.

 

The magnificent, Self Portrait iii,from his 1993 Structural Constellations series and exhibition, reveal wild contours of a face inspired by the self-portraits of painter Josef Albers, made between the period of 1914 and 1918. The method by which Hurrell locates the final image from the original writhing layout of paper maps shows that subjective information can be discovered within codified and hidden structures. His meticulous process involves the faithful tracing of each street until its completion takes the artist on a bewildering journey across several other uncharted territories.

 

A similar obsessive process is lavished onto Hurrell’s more recent pasta paintings, which also use a personalised structure to lift and reassemble erotic passages penned by his preferred authors. Individual pasta letters must be initially sorted before they can be hand applied to the support, in neat little rows informed by a grid. The texture of the glazed pasta letters evokes historical bronzed plaques, often containing matter-of-fact statements and objective information. Conversely, Hurrell’s paintings wield a minimalist aesthetic but are charged with passionate, in fact, vulgar text!

 

The selection of work in this exhibition provides an overview of these two major developments in John Hurrell’s practice during his extensive career. Hurrell’s previous exhibitions include the City Gallery, Wellington, Govett-Brewster Gallery, ARTSPACE, Auckland, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, and Auckland City Art Gallery. His work is held in major public collections including Te Papa, Christchurch Art Gallery, and the Chartwell collection.