Portraits of real life James Bonds

By LOUISE POPPELWELL

Painting portraits is no simple matter - there will always be someone who claims the finished product looks nothing like the subject. Gavin Hurley, however, paints portraits in his own highly polished style.

The theme for this show is special agents, each work depicting an agent with a real name and history. They are not particularly famous but have interesting life stories. Hurley chooses who he paints by their history - he is genuinely fascinated by his subjects.

"I am interested in people and historical things," he says. "There is a woman in the show who was a Russian agent. At one point in the United States they were flushing out all the Russian agents and she came to New Zealand. She changed her identity, then went back to London and operated her spying from a second-hand book shop.

"A lot of the paintings have an American spy film look or are like those old cigarette cards. They were these square-jawed people, kind of gormless. I knew they probably had an interesting life story but they were stern looking.

"They reminded me of characters from movies. Some of the subjects have been the topic of films - one work portrays Christine Keeler, who was involved in the notorious Profumo affair of the 1960s."

The paintings are a departure from Hurley's earlier work. The figures are cropped in an unusual style that produces a sense of suspicion or intimidation, qualities associated with being a spy. "Sometimes when I have finished a work I think they look quite serene but that is not necessarily the intention."

Hurley's works are always completed in oil and are created with considerable devotion and care. It takes him a significant amount of time to produce each one.

He often begins by creating a collage or cut-out of the original which informs his choice of colours and the details of the finished work. Sometimes Hurley will use part of the collage as a stencil, tracing around a nose, for example, rather than drawing it straight from the picture.

The paintings are executed in a singular style - they can appear quite flat, the colours are subtle and somewhat washed-out. Rita Angus, Frances Hodgkins and the portraits of Morandi have impressed his style.

Hurley suggests there is a link between the influences on his work and the period of the subject matter. "These paintings are quite 1950s in style. I think if you're looking at the kind of images that were around, then the colours are quite washed-out and the light sources are contradicted. I strip them to the basics."

Previously, Hurley painted abstracts and still lives but has chosen to focus on portraits. "[Portraits] seem like such an institution. There is a lot of portraiture around that shows people in particular environments with symbolic things in the background that tell you about the people.

"I like erasing all of that and letting the viewer use their own imagination. People will often tell me what the paintings are about before I have even opened my mouth.

"I have a folder full of images. They come from books that have been withdrawn from the library or ones I have picked up from the sale bin. I go through them and find images and keep the ones that speak to me, for some reason, and before you know it I have enough to turn into a show or project."

His exhibitions are always based on a theme. In the past he has focused on school portraits, using as a source the school photographs common in the 1980s. "They were painted from that era when a company would come around to your school and photograph you. I had collected all these images that I found interesting. I liked their awkwardness."

Hurley graduated from Elam in 2000. He has exhibited with Anna Bibby Gallery since graduation, and this is his second solo show.

Exhibition

* What: Agent, by Gavin Hurley

* Where and when: Anna Bibby Gallery, 2 Morgan St, Newmarket, until December 24