John Hurrell – 10 April, 2026

What a great title for a show! So rich in resonances, especially in raising questions about the efficacy of art— if you think art (bearing good will) can improve the moral quality of people’s lives by counteracting suffering.

In Norton’s split-screen film, against a field of soft horizontal ripples, we compare moving diagonal and vertical lines - sometimes reflected and inverted (courtesy of the legs and beak of a stalking heron) - with a long stationary stick protruding at an angle from the rippling surface of a reflecting estuary.

The title though alludes to accuracy and possible failure. Back and forth we look but mainly studying the striding bird that tends to move from left to right.

Its beak (as with the stick) is a point of focus. Linear formalism is mingled with a naturalist narrative; anticipating a flurry of sudden visual dynamics ignited by creaturely hunger. To have that energy released we see static form poised in mid-air, driven by an aching avian intestinal hollow and piercing calculating eye.

Balanced with that driving hunger is the presence of inverted reflection as double: bird/stick and shadows joining and spreading in a triangle like an open mouth hinged on the left; set against a vista of parallel ripples that start to flatten the light-laden watery field.

John Hurrell

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