John Hurrell – 26 March, 2025
The works proclaim themselves as ‘drawn sculptures', three-dimensional items projecting from a plane, that are produced by the artist's arm movements functioning in ‘drawing mode.' Here drawing instantly becomes sculpture, for it is not a preparatory ethos where several stages are anticipated, resulting in a transitional sequence where a future image is envisaged and then produced. The end result very quickly emerges at the beginning.
In this riveting selection of 23 highly evocative Dale Frank epoxy-glass on Perspex paintings, we (as initially exhausted ‘travellers venturing to the outer suburbs’) are treated to a vast range of swirling mingling streams of transparent effervescent colour placed on rectangular mirrors for support—a hyper-energised update of Pollock or Frankenthaler but really, much much more.
Cascading veils of watery chroma spontaneously flicker and pulse as they flow through each other and separate, dissolve, resist, layer-up or merge. All the while spasmodically reflecting fragments of the onlooker’s body amongst the (often) turbulent three-dimensional marks and saturated shapes.
Positioned close to each other, these poured-on streaky images with their longwinded meandering irrelevant titles—when collected together as a wall-sustained community—remain distinct. However, they can also be further divided into four or five varieties, according to background colour, texture or dominant dark shape. Or inventive projecting excursions across the floor space.
As Julian McKinnon says in his excellent accompanying essay, Frank’s acrylic resin-made ‘graphic’ is unusual, a unique type of drawing/painting because of its specific physical properties and application procedures.
It is the sweeping gestural movement and intricate tactility of the thick viscous colour application that makes these busy hi-gloss works so engrossing; their ‘in your face’ sensuality; the weirdness of the occasional projecting ‘container’ forms; the flat glowing transparency that you visually zero in on through thick coloured resin.
The works proclaim themselves as ‘drawn sculptures’, three-dimensional items projecting from a plane, that are produced by the artist’s arm movements functioning in ‘drawing mode.’ Here drawing instantly becomes sculpture, for it is not a preparatory ethos where several stages are anticipated, resulting in a transitional sequence where a future image is envisaged and then produced. The end result very quickly emerges at the beginning.
A large group of these works is quite an extraordinary show to encounter. Well worth a small pilgrimage.
John Hurrell
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