John Hurrell – 15 June, 2026

If we decide to focus on the structuring importance of vowels in written language, we find these ‘written’ marks in Lindsay’s townsite GL show presented as joined-together reshuffled sections of chopped up / restitched canvas strips, that present cursive script or collaged calligraphic linear drawing. Flowing looping handwriting is thus reformatted into impeccably stitched vertical and horizontal bands, quite unlike say, any original compacted typography with its severely discrete horizontal spacing.

The drawn ‘written’ lines made of subtly coloured graphite usually consist of a double layer carefully positioned over thick bands of churning slopped-on paint. Looking a bit like Twomblys that have been pushed through an egg slicer, or the manually-imposing script works of Hanne Darboven, these grids of disembodied sections of agitated (strangely thwarted) looping line are both close and distant. They are a fascinating hybrid of conceptualism and gesturalism, the latter ‘emotive frisson’ sprinkled over rearranged mutilated letter parts.

Oddly compelling in their hairy sparseness, Lindsay’s ambiguously stratified grey fields, peppered with slanted crosses and leaning arches, communicate in a directly bodily manner. Mentally intense nonetheless, they (despite being overtly ‘manual’) become a strangely shredded ‘head-trip’.

In fact, you might even call them ‘deconstructed’ writing, but that is a tad pompous. The gridded marks are too disconnected and perhaps too weedy for that, though their meaning is hinted at through densely tubulent evocation.  Instead, overtly discernible patterns, looping repetitions and varied densities suggest a processual method, and referenced but unseen signifieds.

John Hurrell

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