Profile for John Hurrell

It is extremely interesting in these current questioning times - when the notion of ‘site specificity’ is being loudly challenged by Miwon Kwon, Claire Doherty, James Meyer and others – to see this apparently old fashioned concept re-presented in a Billy Apple installation. It lets us have another think about the topic.

Let’s talk first about reading…When you notice them, the textual convention of footnotes can be a dilemma. Sometimes the annotated references in an essay are far more interesting than the carefully prepared argument articulated by...

The second instalment of PX is much closer to the first than what might have been anticipated, but with a very different focus. Here Jan Bryant has looked at tropes of painting rather than materialities and their politics (which Emmerling...

Thornley's constructions consist of various interlocking pieces made of wood, each separate element covered with canvas, gessoed, painted and then assembled. A painstaking process for works that by themselves in somebody’s home normally would look terrific. Yet as a group at the Gus Fisher, they don’t look very good.

Shepherd’s towering, revolving statue of a hetero couple ecstatically screwing, accompanied by lurid lighting and a disco soundtrack, makes a pithy comment about economy and repression. Shepherd’s show is accompanied by an excellently stimulating essay by Michelle Lunn. In many ways, her text is more provocative than the sculpture.

Actually Dane Mitchell should have

got $20,000. The other art award held in Hamilton in the Gardens every year has that amount, not $15,000, for prize money. He was robbed.

Early Cohen use of floor

drawing robot was fantastic, but then the works became figurative and corny. He never got the machine to make colour decisions,either, I think? Such a shame.

Surely manual skill should not

intrude on the ideas or raison d'etre of the work -assuming they exist. It should not be ostentatious or flashy, but be merely sufficient to do...

Like yr comments above, TW.

David is an inspired choice. Pure brilliance. She is forthright and clear about her view of things. Her visit cannot help but be immensely interesting....

One might disagree with Catherine

David's style of assembling exhibitions, but let's not get personal and racist. At least she puts her name next to what she believes, and doesn't pathetically...