Georgia Scherman Projects is pleased to announce Deuil II & Airborne, new work by
artist Spring Hurlbut. This is both Hurlbut’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and the
inaugural exhibition at Georgia Scherman Projects’ new downtown location on Tecumseth Street.

"Spring Hurlbut has an affinity for tackling difficult subject matter with insight, elegance, and a characteristic balance of emotion and reason." ~ Ann Thomas, Curator of Photography, National Gallery of Canada, Art on Paper, New York, March-April 2008

Previously known for her architectural ornament, installations and photography, Canadian artist Spring Hurlbut recently set herself the task of investigating death. With the objectivity of the artist and the immediacy of the mourner, she has brought to life that which remains after death. Hurlbut’s photographs deal with difficult subject matter, but they are “rescued from the brink of the horrific and maudlin by being possessed of a strong and beckoning life force that [opens] them up to multiple levels of meaning and interpretation” (Roni Feinstein in Art in America May 1995).

Deuil II, (Fr. for mourning) is a continuation of Hurlbut’s earlier photographic work with
cremated remains. In addition to human ashes, which were her subjects in Deuil I, this
new work includes photographs of the remains of beloved domestic animals. The work with animals is in most cases indistinguishable from the work with humans and one cannot but remark upon the leveling of death.

Hurlbut began to work with cremated remains after the death of her father, James. The
project arose out of her “personal need to mark the occasion” and come to terms with his death. She has described her process as a “conversation” with the ashes in which she acknowledges continuing existence while simultaneously bearing witness to passing. In some photographs Hurlbut has used a scientific approach to quantify and measure the remains, in others she has poetically manipulated the ashes in a way that evokes the cosmos.

"Deuil is a project deeply rooted in a sustained artistic oeuvre and practice. It is also an extended collaboration with the families of those ashes she worked with and transformed. Underlying Hurlbut's indelible images of what remains after death is the larger concept of the image as inner vision, as an expressive living memory."

"Hurlbut's galaxies open up and illuminate the subject of death in a rare way. Making photographs that insist upon and embody the naturalness of death as part of life - that, in a sense, affirm the creative potential of death - is a bold and artistically complex undertaking, one that constructs new avenues of discourse and creates new associations with death and mortality" ~ Maia-Mari Sutnik, Curator of Photography, Art Gallery of Toronto, Prefix Photo 15, Toronto, 2007

Airborne, Hurlbut’s new video work, documents in slow motion the swirling ascension of
human ashes as they escape into the atmosphere when the lid is removed from their container. The camera watches as the spiraling particles of ash take on a vibrant new life ~ and then slowly, languidly disappear. Airborne began when a friend and fellow artist asked Hurlbut if she would consider documenting the ashes of her mother, Trudy. Hurlbut was struck by the way Trudy’s cremated remains rose from their container like mist or smoke as she carefully lifted the lid. As with the Deuil projects, friends and relatives of Hurlbut have entrusted her to work with the remains of their family members and Airborne represents six individual subjects including James, the artist’s father.

Spring Hurlbut was born in Toronto in 1952. She studied at the Ontario College of Art (now the Ontario College of Art and Design) and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Hurlbut has exhibited nationally and internationally and her work has met with wide critical acclaim. Hurlbut is represented in the collections of numerous institutions including the National Gallery of Canada and the National Portrait Gallery. Hurlbut’s Mary #1, 2006, was one of three acquisitions by the Art Gallery of Ontario at this year’s Toronto International Art Fair.