In a collection of self-portraits that feature the artist dressed in an array of outfits, Hurlstone reveals the potential of garments to oscillate between their practical, gendered, and fashionable territories into uncharted psychological, emotional and cinematic terrains; we see one man, but many people. These life size works depict a cast of characters that are both familiar, yet also curiously historicised. They allude to characters who might be long gone but persist in our cultural or familial memory.

Printed onto cloth and then embroidered, each portrait is disrupted through a veiling of thread; characters appear and disappear as if following the slight of a magician’s hand. A myriad of threads play on the surface of the cloth making for subtle shifts in rhythm, colour, and light.

A touring exhibition from Ruthin Craft Centre.