Artists: Jack Otway - Zach Zono

Hurst Contemporary opens the doors to its new Percy Street location, welcoming the inaugural exhibition titled The Longest Time with new and significant work by two artists Jack Otway and Zach Zono.

The ever present metronome
The ceaseless present
Time relents

The Longest Time reflects on the elusive nature of the present—both the longest and most fragmented of experiences. Skewed by perception, the present moment can feel intangible and difficult to grasp, but through their works, Jack Otway and Zach Zono invite us to explore the tension between time and memory, and how these forces shape our understanding of the world.

Jack Otway’s | b.1991 | kaleidoscopic paintings are luminous, flat and sensual. Employing a non-hierarchical approach to style, Otway collages fluid, topographic underpaintings with transparent geometries. Through a labour intensive inquiry into the varied, formal structures of abstraction, Otway’s image terrain is a seductive amalgam of intuition and measured intent that follows a disorientating internal logic. By foregrounding distortion and slippage Otway reflects on painting as a site of both conflict and invention.

Where Otway’s past paintings evoke the sensation of digital light, his recent practice moves toward a more natural handling of light, evoking soft, glowing sunlight. Otway allows un-painted areas of raw canvas to bleed through his new architectural forms imbuing them with an enigmatic, dream-like quality. This reflects his interest in abstraction shaped by ruinous landscapes and the relationship between organic and man-made structures.

Otway explores the passage of time through an interest in decaying forms using the remnants of his own paintings—photographed within his studio—to question both time’s inevitable erosion and humanity’s propensity for destruction. His paintings do not represent the landscapes that inform them but suggest them abstractly, invoking a sense of collapse and renewal. His dry brushwork is both casual and sensitive, pointing to the fragility of human-made structures and the silent, creeping forces of nature that will one day reclaim them. In this, Otway is both mourning and inventing—finding painterly solutions that reflect the fragility of our moment in history.

Zach Zono | b.1999 | weaves his narrative with a sense of place, capturing the nuances of memory and existence through abstract gestures. His paintings bridge the landscapes of his South African upbringing with the pulse of life in London, creating a dialogue between past and present. Each stroke is a testament to his lived experience, exploring how memory and environment can translate into visual form.

Rooted in intuition, Zono’s paintings use vibrant colours and layered textures to offer glimpses into his internal landscape. His work is a celebration of movement and memory, a vivid meditation on the passage of time as seen through the lens of his own shifting realities and geography. His titles serve as open-ended invitations, encouraging viewers to engage with the work on their own terms.

Organic forms and vivid hues flow through his compositions, recalling the natural rhythm of life while anchoring us in the present. These elements echo the raw energy of his process—a dance between control and spontaneity where each brushstroke builds upon the last to capture the sensation of living. His paintings are filled with a dynamic energy that reflects both the emotional weight of memory and the vitality of the present, offering a visual journey through time and place.

The works in The Longest Time operate as visual timelines, mapping experiences that span past, present, and future. Both Otway and Zono engage deeply with memory—using it to reflect on personal histories and the natural world. Through deliberate use of colour and composition, their works evoke a tension between nostalgia and immediacy, provoking the viewer to consider time’s elusive nature.