PHOTOGRAPHY
DYADIC CIRCLES, 2019 - 2020
Toronto-based artist Spring Hurlbut’s Dyadic Circles, 2019 –2020 is a series of photographs of circular compositions predominantly
using the funerary ash of domestic animals. Some additional pieces include the ashes of four of her family members.
Each Dyadic Circle is divided vertically into two parts with differently coloured ash in each semi-circle. In some cases, both halves are
from a single individual, and in other instances they represent two different subjects. The final colour of the ash is entirely dictated by
the temperature of the fire during cremation. Living individuals, family members, or friends of the deceased have entrusted the artist to
work with the ashes of their loved ones.
Within this group of works, there are also three corner pieces, consisting of framed works hung well above eye level traversing the corners
of the gallery. When a Dyadic Circles’ vertical division is visually aligned with the corner of the room, the circle becomes spatially ambiguous
and can be seen as a dimensional orb.
Dyadic Circles was inspired by Hilma af Klint and Kazimir Malevich, both early abstractionists who were themselves influenced by spiritualism
and metaphysical ideas. af Klint painted a circle divided vertically into black and white parts. In Hurlbut’s reinvention of this composition, the
circular symbol suggests a duality within a whole, a kind of pendulum that swings between life and death, night and day.
A FINE LINE, 2016
Hurlbut’s photographic project, A Fine Line was influenced by the narrow telescopic photographs of the moon’s surface recorded by the Lunar
Orbiter 1 in 1966 and reproduced in astronomy books of the period. Hurlbut’s photographs mimic the equally spaced horizontal lines of the
Orbiter’s lunar transits. With mathematical precision, each horizontal ash line was placed equidistantly one above the other. She then intentionally
disrupted the lines, causing ash plumes to expand and disperse into a cosmic blackness.
These resulting lines appear to oscillate—like tremors of evanescence—reminiscent of a musical score.
AFTER MALEVICH: THE MOMENT OF DISSOLUTION, 2014 - 2018
The photographic series After Malevich: The Moment of Dissolution, is based on Kazimir Malevich’s paintings and drawings in which a single
geometrical form gradually fades into the background. Similarly, Hurlbut’s ash squares, crosses and circles are clearly defined and then disrupted
causing the particulates to dissipate into blackness. Hurlbut’s geometric shapes have an integrity of form that keeps them whole and intact, but are
altered by another force that dissipates their structure, suggestive of the dissolution that ultimately affects all living forms.
DEUIL I, 2005 - 2007
Five years after her father James Hurlbut’s death in 1999, Hurlbut began photographing his cremated remains in an attempt to preserve
his life, instead of consigning him to a fading memory. Requests from other family members and friends ensued. Hurlbut took on the daunting
task of documenting the ashes, and more importantly, the spirit of their loved ones. Hoping to encourage an accepting view of death as our
inevitable destiny, she strived to reveal the sublimity and beauty of one of life’s most feared, yet inevitable experiences.
DEUIL II, 2007 - 2008
Ashes are highly elusive, fugitive, and almost impossible to work with. The images that the aritist creates can disappear in a second with one
wrong movement.
”I have always been struck by the fact that this fine, cremated dust is all that that remains of an existence.” - Spring Hurlbut
SHUT UP - DON’T PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH, 2010
Charlie McCarthy dummies were once manufactured by the Reliable Toy Company, that once operated across the street from Hurlbut’s studio.
Hurlbut’s dummy has a ribbon coming out of his mouth with the words “DON’T PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH” printed on it. This statement points
to the contradiction between the supposed autonomy of the dummy and the words that the ventriloquist actually does put into his mouth. This
illusion allows the dummy to make outrageous statements as he is endlessly reprimanded by the ventriloquist who feigns a lack of control
over what the dummy says.
SHUT UP - AUTOMATONOPHOBIA, 2010
For Automatonophobia, Hurlbut took nine photographs of a Jerry Mahoney dummy’s head turning, inspired by the photographer Nadar’s self-portraits
of his own head rotating. Unlike a human head, the dummy’s head can rotate 360 degrees without turning its body. The uncanny result reveals the
inanimate reality of the dummy when divorced from his connection to the ventriloquist who usually controls his movements and speech.
VIDEO
AIRBORNE, 2008
Russel Lord, curator of photography at New Orleans Museum of Art, said of Airborne: “In combining the personal with the profound, Hurlbut’s
work creates a piece in which endings are re-staged as beginnings and the reductive finality of death is animated into a vibrant, and often
very elegant, afterlife.”
SUM FONG, 2008 - 2015
Sum Fong, 2008 - 2015, is a video loop in which the fine ashes of a single individual, Sum Fong, ascend on invisible air currents, spiralling slowly
before eventually disappearing into the ether. The video represents four different takes of opening the box containing the ashes. Each of the four
takes was strikingly different from one another as if they had been choreographed. The grace and delicacy of Sum Fong’s movements were
captivating, as she performed outside of time.
INSTALLATION
THE FINAL SLEEP, 2001
One of Hurlbut’s most memorable installations was The Final Sleep/Le Dernier Sommeil, 2001, an exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum
(of natural history) using white and transparent artefacts and specimens from different departments of the ROM’s collection. In this installation Hurlbut
subverts the conventions of scientific and encyclopedic museological display by presenting an alternative interpretation. Her use of a monochromatic
theme creates a non-hierarchical relationship between all the objects presented. All things are equal in repose.
BELOVED AND FORSAKEN, 2004
In 2004 Spring Hurlbut was invited to create an exhibition using the artifacts and specimens in the collections of The Manchester Museum, England.
She discovered many unexpected and rarely exhibited items which she selected and displayed in antiquated display cases. Some of the usual specimens
included the Phallus Impudicus, an Australian mushroom shaped like a phallus, which was once whacked down and burned by Charles Darwin’s aunt in a
flurry of Victorian modesty; and 100 year old phantom frogs that had turned white through the bleaching effects of alcohol preservative. In the Egyptology
section, Hurlbut found stacks of sealed archival boxes containing mummy dust and sweepings which she displayed in their unopened found state.
Beloved and Forsaken focussed on overlooked and non-acquisitioned specimens and on antiquated presentation methods that have fallen into disuse.
LE JARDIN DU SOMMEIL, 1998
In 1998 Hurlbut showed the haunting work, Le Jardin du Sommeil, a collection of over one hundred vintage and antique children’s cribs and beds, collected
in Quebec and France. These wrought iron and cast iron beds, circa 1890 to 1940, were arranged in rows, suggestive of an orphanage, a hospital or a
cemetery. The solemnity of the installation brought both an awareness of the beginnings of life and the fragility of life. The wide range of styles in the bed’s
construction also highlighted the creative inventiveness of the people who designed the beds and put them into production. This work now has a
permanent home at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Québec.
SACRIFICIAL ORNAMENT, 1990
In the mid-1980s Hurlbut began research into the genesis of ancient Greek architectural ornament. She replaced abstracted design elements that
decorated capitals and friezes with organic forms such as cast bones, cast cow’s tongues and real animal teeth. Through these substitutions, she
disclosed the pagan sources that were behind these classical motifs. This series of works was exhibited at the former Helmsley Palace through an
invitation from Creative Time, New York.
WORKS IN SITU, 1984 - 1986
Hurlbut recognized that classical Greek architecture had perfect proportions and idealized symmetry but excluded a human element. She reacted to this
perfection by hand applying plaster on a wall surface beneath a classical entablature, creating a record of the movements of her own body. In subsequent
works, she pulled wet plaster into elastic skeins that grew up walls and around classical columns creating hand-extruded forms that were in stark contrast to
the geometric rigidity of the classical forms. These works were all site specific and were destroyed after a period of time, either because the exhibition
ended or the building in which they were created was demolished.