Mary Hurrell’s selections for the tender and tangled
Some feelings arrive all at once: joy with grief, tenderness with tension. The works Mary Hurrell has gathered move within this overlap. They don’t resolve so much as stay open, circling the edges of something familiar but hard to name.
The ability to hold contrast in the same breath runs through all of Mary Hurrell’s work. An artist, composer, and vocalist based in Bristol, she moves fluidly between music, performance, sculpture, and writing. Her soundscapes—built from voice, electronic textures, rhythmic pulses, and warped field recordings—explore the meeting points of physical and psychological experience, often moving between sensation and emotion, form and feeling.
She shares: “This selection embraces the bittersweet, the experience of feeling love and sorrow at the same time. It draws from artists and pieces that inspire me with their depth of feeling, rawness, honesty, and beauty. It also reflects my ongoing artistic preoccupations with inbetweeness and intimacy, and how, in these troubled times, keeping love and mourning close can feel like a way forward.”
SOPHIE – L.O.V.E.
Love at first listen. This was the first song I heard by Sophie, and it hooked me immediately. Sophie’s music is tender, brutal, playful, elastic, expansive. She left us too soon.
Roni Horn – Pink Tons (2009)
I have long been a fan and felt a strong connection to the work of Roni Horn. Her practice engages with the bodily and the sensory, playing with notions of identity and mutability, ‘presence’ and the invisible. I’m very interested in ideas of precision and fluidity, lightness and weight. When I experienced Horn’s Pink Tons in the flesh at Tate Modern in 2009, it made a big impact. The sculpture felt like music to me: physical and emotional, beyond the visible.
Mica Levi – Love (Under the Skin Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
I’ve always loved film soundtracks, and Mica Levi’s are some of my favorites, particularly Under the Skin and Jackie. For me, Mica has the ability to speak through music and express the internal world of the character they’re writing for, creating a kind of emotional fluid that runs deep beneath the image.
Rei Kawakubo / COMME DES GARCON – Spring/Summer 2025 Collection
Comme des Garçons fashion designer Rei Kawakubo is known for her avant-garde designs and her ability to challenge conventional notions of beauty, gender, good taste, and fashionability. To me, the Comme des Garçons collections are moving, breathing artworks—body sculptures and environments that transform the body, often presented with strikingly contrasting soundtracks. I love the way Kawakubo explores in-betweenness, the space between boundaries and disciplines, and reconfigures notions of the body’s internal and external landscapes.
Björk / Nan Goldin – Prayer Of The Heart
Two of my long-time heroes, Björk and Nan Goldin, collaborated on the multimedia installation Heartbeat in 2001. I remember seeing it at the Barbican in London and being moved to tears by the combination of Goldin’s images and Björk’s voice. The work explored themes of intimacy, love, transience, relationships, and vulnerability. It consisted of 245 projected slides by Goldin and a soundtrack by Björk, Prayer of the Heart, composed by John Tavener for Björk and performed with the Brodsky Quartet.
Ikebana
Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging—a centuries-old practice that involves the careful placement of flowers, leaves, and branches to convey a feeling or emotion. I think about composing music, performances, and artworks in a similar way: how to express a feeling through the arrangement of elements, textures, and forms, and how to create balance and harmony through asymmetry.
