10
—16 November
Saloon Store
Level 4/252 Swanston St, Melbourne
Julian Hocking is a Melbourne based artist working predominantly in print media. His distinct graphic style often incorporates the use of black ink and graphite alongside other non-traditional materials such as Rye Whiskey and Vermouth. Often self-referential, while borrowing from art history and popular culture, his work employs these varied media to explore the fundamentals of the constructed image.
In Pure X, Hocking draws on the idea of the variable ‘x’ in algebra - a symbol for the unknown that nonetheless determines the balance of a mathematical equation. This concept underpins the works: through measured compositions, wry phrases and restrained colour, he tests how abstraction can give form to uncertainty. Each piece becomes a kind of visual equation, worked and reworked until something cohesive, if not entirely knowable, emerges.
