Expurgating Content in Favour of the Ludic
John Hurrell’s forthcoming exhibition Expurgating Content in Favour of the Ludic presents an assortment of wall relief sculptures and freestanding works made mainly from plastic peg baskets, cable ties and occasionally, soap holders.
The deliberately grandiose title draws attention to the process of making rather than to an interest in narrative and ‘content’. Works are called ‘things’ with a calculated vagueness and are motivated by a playful experimentation with materials.
Many of the items used were found broken on the footpath while the artist was wandering around Auckland, or else were discovered intact and new in supermarkets, The Warehouse or ‘2 Dollar’ shops.
They have now become improvised drawings in space, doodles in stacked plastic, tumbling scribbles of rearranged detritus. They are also ‘conversations’ with the works of other artists such as Jessica Stockholder, Dan Arps and Don Driver, or comments on ‘fetish’ sculpture.
However it is debatable whether Hurrell succeeds in removing content altogether. By virtue of the history of the found and purchased items used, and the associations they generate, these works seem to happily fail in such aims.
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