John Hurrell

Christchurch Particles 5

from Particles in (Canterbury) Space series

paint on paper ( Christchurch Street Map)

2004

John Hurrell writes:

This work is from a Particles in (Canterbury) Space series of paintings on paper exhibited in 64zero3 in October 2004, in Christchurch. They use different brands of foldable, Christchurch street map and carry on an interest in chance that was first publicly illustrated in the 1983 Andrew Bogle curated ACAG exhibition, The Grid: Lattice and Network, which included a dice score painting . This interest was also later hinted at in the two large ‘figurative’, gridded, black map works owned by Te Papa and AAG, where descriptive ‘hairy’ lines of linear street clusters fragment over the sea and open countryside sections of each of the many maps.

Christchurch Particles 5 demonstrates the selection of a characteristic thin line that is used for paths, park walkways, and parts of airport runways, all found in different parts of the city. This line is a lot thinner than the one used for streets and roads. All contextual information around it has been blocked out with black acrylic. When the networks of streets - as well as the boundaries that separate the small town or inner city inserts from the main map body - are obliterated, a new sort of unified space emerges, one that is similar to that seen in Len Lye’s 1972 black and white film Particles in Space.