When I was a child, two things used to bother me a lot. I had heard that a giant squid could blanket Piccadilly Circus and if we pulled out our intestines they would reach the length of a tennis court. Later I learned that there are more atoms in a cup of water than there are cups of water in all the oceans of the world.
Nicky Hirst
Known for her subtle and elegant work employing a variety of media, Nicky Hirst’s art is perhaps best described as an exploration of serendipity that can occur in unintended and unexpected places. Her sources may be particular objects or certain words whose meaning she may subtly shift by manipulation or juxtaposition. Hirst’s output is multifarious, including drawing, sculpture, etched glass, collage, printed text, photography and public art commissions. While avoiding simple categorisation, Hirst’s art is always characterised by a measured stance and sensitivity towards materials.
Penny Sexton, curator
There is a stealth quality to Nicky Hirst’s visual observations. She brings elements of the everyday into focus that we’ve already clocked in some way, but may have not recognised in terms of their full meaning potential. Her framing of sites and materials, through photography and collage, bring indiscriminate areas of life and lesser-known details of image-making history into view, in ways that connect us with the bigger picture. And always composed with a painterly eye and a wry awareness of art and pop cultural sensibilities.
Rebecca Geldard, writer and critic
Nicky Hirst specialises in fluid linguistic games. Her work acknowledges the tension between language’s parallel functions to denote and connote: in the task of communication, her objects and images revel in problems of interpretation. By crossing the line between formality and freedom, she springs the viewer from the trap of semantic closure into liquid possibility.
Martin Holman, writer and curator
These objects pack power, but writing about it is well-nigh impossible. What is really noticeable is that Hirst understands metaphors. She can summon and control them. This is a rare gift. What she seems to do is this: she suggests a number of possible metaphors, but fulfils none of them. At the same time she ensures that they are coherent one with another. This sets up a kind of magnetic field of associations in which (the viewer feels) the imagination is held, as if suspended, or floating. And in this way the work’s subject becomes not just the connections, but the very idea of connection itself. This in turn becomes metaphorical: it is about language, and human relationships.
David Lillington, writer and curator
The non-intrusive subtlety of Nicky Hirst’s work is a mixture of morality and pragmatism – recession aesthetics. Her concern is to alter perceptions not produce expensive objects. And stealth can be more effective than confrontation, a whisper more persuasive than a shout. Clarity and elegance informs her work. The idiosyncrasies of a space – its history and usage and design decisions that have affected it – provide the stimulus for an oblique visual poetry.
Sarah Kent, art critic and writer
It is as if the artist sets out with an interest in making something restrained, quiet, almost not there, and yet, quite unwittingly, the final image takes over, acquiring impact, becoming more forceful than it ever intended to be. It is this working method, unpicking and unravelling what is often already there, that distinguishes Hirst’s practice.
Jeni Walwin, curator
On entering Nicky Hirst’s studio one immediately feels caught up in her work as if in a complex web. Each object seems to be in continuous dialogue with another. Meaning does not unfold within the restricted area of one piece of work, but in the space in between.
Charlotte Klonk, art historian
Hirst succeeds in making the themes of dislocation and displacement function at several interrelated levels, allowing the work to acknowledge fully the different contexts in which it operates: historical and political as much as emotional and formal. This integrated approach is achieved through a deployment of the mechanics of empathy, of involvement and disengagement, via minimal interventions into the commonplace and everyday.
Sotiris Kyriacou, writer and curator
You sense the artist’s enjoyment of words, images and ideas that pull you both one way and the other, that have an in-built duality. Rules constrain but also liberate. Algorithms are ugly but also beautiful. Hirst enjoys playing with the tension between restriction and freedom, between the predetermined and the random, the deliberate and the accidental, the similar and the different, front and back, inside and outside, the artless and the artful, between what is taken away and what is left behind. You might say that everything here is neither one thing nor the other.
James Peto, writer and curator
The faith she must have had in discovering an image that struck a chord in her, the trust she must have had in letting her intuition guide her to find the pair, to connect with the other, to discover things, to not think about the original context of the image. To not think about the original intent, but to create a new intention, to use that intention, or to discover that intention, through discovering the counterpart. It’s all so overwhelmingly genius. I don’t understand why my friends didn’t like it.
Sara Saadat, review for Domobaal Elemental Works
Nicky Hirst
Known for her subtle and elegant work employing a variety of media, Nicky Hirst’s art is perhaps best described as an exploration of serendipity that can occur in unintended and unexpected places. Her sources may be particular objects or certain words whose meaning she may subtly shift by manipulation or juxtaposition. Hirst’s output is multifarious, including drawing, sculpture, etched glass, collage, printed text, photography and public art commissions. While avoiding simple categorisation, Hirst’s art is always characterised by a measured stance and sensitivity towards materials.
Penny Sexton, curator
There is a stealth quality to Nicky Hirst’s visual observations. She brings elements of the everyday into focus that we’ve already clocked in some way, but may have not recognised in terms of their full meaning potential. Her framing of sites and materials, through photography and collage, bring indiscriminate areas of life and lesser-known details of image-making history into view, in ways that connect us with the bigger picture. And always composed with a painterly eye and a wry awareness of art and pop cultural sensibilities.
Rebecca Geldard, writer and critic
Nicky Hirst specialises in fluid linguistic games. Her work acknowledges the tension between language’s parallel functions to denote and connote: in the task of communication, her objects and images revel in problems of interpretation. By crossing the line between formality and freedom, she springs the viewer from the trap of semantic closure into liquid possibility.
Martin Holman, writer and curator
These objects pack power, but writing about it is well-nigh impossible. What is really noticeable is that Hirst understands metaphors. She can summon and control them. This is a rare gift. What she seems to do is this: she suggests a number of possible metaphors, but fulfils none of them. At the same time she ensures that they are coherent one with another. This sets up a kind of magnetic field of associations in which (the viewer feels) the imagination is held, as if suspended, or floating. And in this way the work’s subject becomes not just the connections, but the very idea of connection itself. This in turn becomes metaphorical: it is about language, and human relationships.
David Lillington, writer and curator
The non-intrusive subtlety of Nicky Hirst’s work is a mixture of morality and pragmatism – recession aesthetics. Her concern is to alter perceptions not produce expensive objects. And stealth can be more effective than confrontation, a whisper more persuasive than a shout. Clarity and elegance informs her work. The idiosyncrasies of a space – its history and usage and design decisions that have affected it – provide the stimulus for an oblique visual poetry.
Sarah Kent, art critic and writer
It is as if the artist sets out with an interest in making something restrained, quiet, almost not there, and yet, quite unwittingly, the final image takes over, acquiring impact, becoming more forceful than it ever intended to be. It is this working method, unpicking and unravelling what is often already there, that distinguishes Hirst’s practice.
Jeni Walwin, curator
On entering Nicky Hirst’s studio one immediately feels caught up in her work as if in a complex web. Each object seems to be in continuous dialogue with another. Meaning does not unfold within the restricted area of one piece of work, but in the space in between.
Charlotte Klonk, art historian
Hirst succeeds in making the themes of dislocation and displacement function at several interrelated levels, allowing the work to acknowledge fully the different contexts in which it operates: historical and political as much as emotional and formal. This integrated approach is achieved through a deployment of the mechanics of empathy, of involvement and disengagement, via minimal interventions into the commonplace and everyday.
Sotiris Kyriacou, writer and curator
You sense the artist’s enjoyment of words, images and ideas that pull you both one way and the other, that have an in-built duality. Rules constrain but also liberate. Algorithms are ugly but also beautiful. Hirst enjoys playing with the tension between restriction and freedom, between the predetermined and the random, the deliberate and the accidental, the similar and the different, front and back, inside and outside, the artless and the artful, between what is taken away and what is left behind. You might say that everything here is neither one thing nor the other.
James Peto, writer and curator
The faith she must have had in discovering an image that struck a chord in her, the trust she must have had in letting her intuition guide her to find the pair, to connect with the other, to discover things, to not think about the original context of the image. To not think about the original intent, but to create a new intention, to use that intention, or to discover that intention, through discovering the counterpart. It’s all so overwhelmingly genius. I don’t understand why my friends didn’t like it.
Sara Saadat, review for Domobaal Elemental Works