The Sleepers (1 of 4)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

In his series The Sleepers (2020), Hurlstone explores the moment between sleep and wakefulness in order to visualise the often-enigmatic existence of men’s emotional lives. He says, ‘These sleeping men appear and disappear, floating somewhere indecipherable between threads. And between those threads lies joy and anguish, terror and pleasure, restlessness and comfort; an invitation to intimacy and a plea to be alone.’ The Sleepers combines Hurlstone’s personal photographs with selected images from an archive of photographs the artist discovered by Montague Glover, an architect and holder of a Military Cross for bravery in the First World War, who recorded life with his lover as well as other men to whom he was sexually attracted over the years. 
The series was shown at Craft Council’s Collect exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in 2020. It has since been exhibited in Portraits responding to Rembrandt at Oriel Davies Gallery, Powys (2022), as part of The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour of Rembrandt’s Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume.

Nigel Hurlstone (born 1970) lives and works in North Wales. Following an MA (distinction) in Textiles, he was one of the first graduates to be awarded a PhD with practice by Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000. He has worked simultaneously as an artist, writer and senior lecturer for the past 20 years, and in 2014 established a studio in Ffynnongroyw, North Wales. Hurlstone addresses how art can be used in spaces of specific cultural and historical significance to challenge cultural norms and encourage dialogue. He has worked with international institutions, such as the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, as well as community-based groups, museums and galleries in the UK, to present alternative narratives through art-based interventions. Recent work illuminating issues and inequalities in Health and Social Care has been shown at Collect (Saatchi Gallery, 2019), and as part of the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour in 2022. Currently, he is working on a substantial body of work supported by the Arts Council of Wales that employs stitched artefacts and storytelling to offer insight into the challenge and inequality of chronic illness and end-of-life care.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Nigel Hurlstone (1970 - )

Title

The Sleepers (1 of 4)

Date

2020

Medium

Textile - Digitally printed cotton organdie with machine embroidery in burmilana and cotton 30 thread mounted on cotton twill.

Dimensions

height: 120 cm; width: 94 cm; depth: 2.8 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist, December 2022

Provenance

Purchased from the artist, December 2022, through the Art XUK project 2022-23

GAC number

19134