John Hurrell – 12 March, 2016

This small group show explores diverse approaches to colour saturation and paint support, with only one square framed work present, newcomer Billy McQueen; his softly stained and daubed canvas that is the largest work present, thick jagged brushstrokes of pale green and grey (some with splash marks) swirling around a hollow ‘tunnelling’ centre of soft brown. It has a viscerality that never gets overwhelming, for you are always aware of the canvas and accentuated picture plane.

Nicola Holden’s single work explores reflection, the support being a hinged line of vertical rectangles. The two stretchers’ inside planes are painted with fluorescent red so that the bright colour bounces off the floor and back wall, to be deflected up through the thin white fabric stretched across them. The effect is subtle. You are not quite sure what you are looking at because from a distance you initially assume the fabric is delicately stained with a pink wash.

Miranda Parkes has three new ‘baggy canvas’ works, greatly varying in size and intimacy, but not in her inventive surface manipulation. The largest one has stripes structured in a v-formation, with pink and purple dominating in the crumpled centre and blue and green strident in the two sides. The middle sized one is floral and compressed in character, as if Georgia O’Keefe were to paint a magnolia, with clean white shapes, green lines and crisp edges. The smallest one has wide horizontal bands of thin and delicate, but hot, colours rippling across its surface, and a golden underbelly that gives it stability.

The two contributions (one oval, the other rectangular) from Glen Snow reveal his method of gluing together lined up thin wooden batons with coloured and squelchy acrylic, letting the ‘mud’ dry, and peeling it off - so blobs become flat suckers pried off a glossy surface - while other rubbery dried paint remnants are later attached. Snow works on the structure from above so that the exhibited side (then wet) is on the flat desk and not visible to him during the manipulating process. Chance and preplanning shrewdly combined.

The projecting bi-plane sculpture by Ian Peter Weston presents an icy coloured, bluish white, double wing - with struts - made of paper, card, string and aluminium. An enigmatic section of wing from an aircraft apparently used to globally transport the Queen’s mail, it extends out into the gallery like twin fingers, beckoning for an imaginative response. This white shadowy form downplays colour, speaking of high altitude, thin air and speed. Cool but not clinical, it draws us into the bright light and stability.

John Hurrell

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