John Hurrell – 22 October, 2023

In this unusual four-artist show at Anna Miles, we can swiftly divide the work into two camps: an interest in pattern making on firm supports and with it a possible path to organisational disintegration (Tuck and Vaughan); and an interest in contrasting straight support edges or painted geometry—or soft pliant support also with geometry (Gorman and Cochran).

A magnificent Barbara Tuck (and /or 111) from 1990 dominates the exhibition. Nine horizontal ovals hover on the wall in elegant (slightly) lop-sided formation, with soft velvety (almost flocked) paint applied on cardboard. Patterns have been made using a roller technique that picks up the painted marks carefully positioned on glass and resets them on the new curved support so they become subtly misaligned (a pinch skew-whiff). That plays into the peculiar asymmetric grid they are presented in. Inside and out. Micro versus macro.

A few of Adrienne Vaughan‘s works on paper in comparison are architectural in allusion, but most are about two contrasting or overlapping patterns clashing in spatial juxtaposition. We see rival calligraphic units rubbing up together in violent tension; little skirmishes amongst warring battalions.

Kristy Gorman‘s severe compositions play with edge: hard and soft; of painted shape or float-mounted support. Some faint vertical lines are delicate and hazy, other linear polygons dark and razor sharp. A few paper edges are carefully torn, a couple of others feature pastel congealed globular pulp, using a deckle technique.

Vita Cochran has two droopy black cloth bags, featuring layered lined fabric colourfully decorated with overlapping zigzagging linear formations, and a-topped with looped handles. Their soft caved-in silhouettes are accentuated by the thin dark vertical wooden plinths they sitting on, and with which they merge (being placed on wee platforms on these obelisks) as a foil to Gorman; two ‘freestanding’ textile sculptures resonating against Gorman’s painted—highly nuanced—planar constructions.

In both pairings, varied pleasurable tactilities, border qualities and formational dynamics rule.

John Hurrell

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