Matthew Hurdle
Matthew Hurdle works at the intersection of contemporary papermaking, material transformation and devotional practice. His labour-intensive processes investigate humility, vulnerability and renewal, with meaning embedded through the physical transformation of natural fibres into paper. Presented at Sydney Contemporary, these new bodies of work extend Hurdle’s ongoing investigation into clothing as both material and metaphor. Garments carrying traces of ritual and everyday use are soaked, beaten, formed and pressed into handmade paper. In You are beautiful when you cry, pulped hessian is brought into dialogue with ultramarine blue. Sackcloth has long represented humility and repentance, while ultramarine has signified virtue, sanctity and wealth. Hurdle holds these opposing symbolic positions in tension, suggesting that vulnerability and beauty can exist together. In Self Portrait {when my hands relax I can sleep}, pulped hessian is combined with the artist’s worn black cotton T-shirt. A garment associated with rest becomes a tactile paper surface, drawing attention to the body’s quiet rituals and the presence accumulated by everyday objects through use. Across both series, papermaking functions as material process and conceptual framework. Through the slow transformation of worn materials, Hurdle considers how memory, devotion and human experience can become embedded within paper.
Artworks
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