John Hurrell – 24 October, 2025

In Starkwhite, five unusual linear three-dimensional paintings by Melbourne artist Jim Roche (b.1989) cling to the wall as a strange sort of sculpture/drawing hybrid. Made of carved poplar, polystyrene foam, ink and synthetic resin that collectively draw on surfboard and skateboard technology, but looking eviscerated, these glossy minimalist ‘A-frame’ sculptures have an impeccable industrial finish with no traces of manual colour application—only delicately sprayed airbrush. Colour radiates from within the depths of the resin, not from the outer surface. Three or four hues are used for each.

The enclosed bulbous negative space is a crucial element. Their dominant inverted or toppled U, V or H shapes, though ‘vessels’, have landscape connotations when placed horizontally on a vertical wall; or as a variety of archway when vertical. The large symmetrical layered abstract shapes (sometimes stacked within the arches, or receding as in a tunnel) have an architectural strangeness when seen in an enclosed gallery space, because their curved, contour-clinging, painted bands make them hard to categorize.

Dark strips travel along the upper and lower outward projecting edges, while paler forms nestle in the centre of each lower U shape. Like darting fish, the pale minimal forms (when on their sides) suggest a rapid forward-moving trajectory, for motion is slyly embedded in their austere stationary morphology. In one untypical work, the tapered point on the right, where the two elongated, voluptuously curved, halves horizontally meet, suggests a piscine snout.

As with a linear drawing, we mentally fill in details between the outer contours whilst enjoying their formal idiosyncrasies and internal spatial implications. Through these carved joined-up ‘brackets’ we are invited to imaginatively ‘penetrate’ the solid Auckland gallery walls contained within. We look through and into, whilst also looking at them.

John Hurrell

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