John Hurrell – 31 March, 2026

The complex, very intimate, intricate collagelike paintings of Henry Turner have varied (twice textural) ingredients that are surrealist or dreamlike in their mood. Yet they are also decorative and highly sensual; delighting in their applied materiality.

Turner’s 21 works are presented as either 4 gold coloured bronze pelvic bone-shaped sculptures (on plinths) containing ancient primitive lifeforms, or else 17 hand-painted ‘fake collages’ (or elaborate jewel-encrusted embroidery) in a space surrounded by oblong-patterned blanket-covered walls.

This means the gallery ambience is very unusual. The soft ‘warming’ blankets create a welcoming ambience with no hint of irony, but an overwhelming body-friendly sensation nonetheless—hinting perhaps of the urge to decorate or heat-up oneself, or find ‘womb-ness’, an enclosing fluffy comfy bed, and maybe even sexual intimacy. Some other works are isolated from the beguiling enclosing space, using oval formats and being like large theatrical brooches.

Yet guilt, anxiety and terror however are definitely suggested in the allusive title (with its caps), even though we can see very little of such within the picture frames, where talking figures introduce an enigmatic narrative dimension that is not at all expressionistic. They appear to be peaceful and happy, though slotted in amongst painted abstract rectangles. Through heads and bodies interspersed amongst drippy oozy textures we see planar rectangles that emphasize painterly hybridity. And granular rocklike forms hovering as menacing fields within an ambiguous space.

In fact Turner’s gallery treatment is almost as interesting as the exhibited ‘minimal’ sculpture presented inside it or the figurative paintings on the walls, due to the spread-out square patterns of the lining rugs and the gentle soft cuddly colours of orange, brown and blue. The artist is admirably restless in his stretcher panel experimentation and the occasional use of texts.

It is clever to do this paint-based installation in late March, as winter slowly starts to make its presence more assertively felt. Chromatic choices and gallery lining become metaphors for aspects of display ideology.

John Hurrell

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