John Hurrell – 24 February, 2025

In his debut presentation at Ivan Anthony, Miles Hendricks presents a fascinating debut show of delicate charcoal drawings (with the occasional painting) on canvas. They are distinctive in that they stylistically blend curvy & cute linear cartoon-film animation stills with smudgy Renaissance style preparatory sketches, normally done in their day with chalk for frescos or portable panels.

In modern times, after being filled in with colour, and set against backdrops, these complex but saccharine drawings might be used in a rapid-fire sequence of related images where movement is generated through light projected through celluloid. Here they are in isolation and left linear. And allusively overlaid with a mixture of lined images to add complexity.

The title is somewhat open-ended. With an apostrophe, it could be about the curved left or righthand truncated end of a rainbow arch. Without it, ‘end’ might be a verb. (The rainbow might be a symbol for innocence, or leading to ‘a pot of gold’ as a reward for prolonged interest.)

Most of these unusual painted graphic images depict vague versions of what seem to be cute Disney (or Warner Bros) bunnies, lambs, fawns, mice, teddy bears, china dolls or doe-eyed young girls. Or smurfs. Many appear to be hybrids and so invite many interpretations. One girl has at least four arms.

Though cunning in their pitch for mass appeal amongst the v. young, they go beyond a wilful dumbness, as if they formed themselves deliberately, oddly willing themselves into being—yet perhaps still hesitant about their creative process.

Overall these blurry and elegantly organised drawings downplay volume and emphasise edge. They are highly ambiguous, but intriguing. Eccentric but fascinating.

Hendricks skillfully uses different types of crisp grey pencil and nuanced coloured chalk to great smeary effect when dramatically combined with brooding charcoal and turbulent expressionist paint. Close up they have a grittiness not obvious from a distance. And an enigma from some descriptive details left unstated.

Strangely, being complex configurations they require prolonged concentration to decipher. You need to recognise certain simplified body parts and from there gradually gain an understanding of the whole composition and speculate on its intended context. The canvases don’t appear to aspire to the status of satire, for the graphics have a serious ambience and weird austerity that paradoxically focusses on their mingled genres.

They are pointed but to what? Perhaps making a droll comment on excessive sweetness, whilst not lampooning, for the title endorses that ethos. Embracing a tapped-in emotion, with tongue firmly outside the cheek.

John Hurrell

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