John Hurrell – 5 August, 2025

In this exhibition of six Killeen wall panels, various classifiable items from the ‘real world’ are sorted into groups and placed in delineated transparent non-stretch cylindrical containers, so you can think about connections between included specimens.

You tend to deal with their implied commonality pretty quickly. Why are these tightly clustered, digitally-assembled images positioned together, rendered in six glass urns—three on each of two intersecting walls? How do they interact, if at all? What does being enclosed like this achieve? Especially when there are small jars inside larger jars.

Even if studied in isolation, each image represents multiple layers of hybridity, various types of blending or amalgaming. All six panels have several blended ‘concoctions’ squeezed within. It is about layering and juxtaposing. One within each shape. Inside its contours. The other around it. Using the space outside.

You might recall that in language-use long words often have much smaller ones buried inside. Or else are added to on their outside using (sometimes) a hyphen or an ‘and’.

There are also multiple distortions, violent impositions of ornate patterns and abrupt jumps in scale. These all alter meaning. Such discordant elements keep the images refreshing.

Reading and looking are naturally very different experiences. Because we are here looking at objects sometimes doubling as symbols, pondering their significance invariably leads to new visualizations, new objects, new actions, new attributes.

Of course, reading is similar when the decoding of a letter sequence in a word finishes and the focussed imagination or even the opposite, scatter-shot daydreaming, takes over. We often take a chance by abandoning the initial impetus and getting excited by unexpected associations, alluring new distractions that possibly lead us to something beneficial. Killeen’s cylindrical containers as images also help us to do this.

John Hurrell

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