Sunday 19th May 2024
Location: Butler Gallery Learning & Engagement Centre
Making and materiality are foundational in my predominately sculptural practice which takes influence from mass produced commodities and the fetishistic surfaces of retail. Honing and developing my own improvised, markedly physical processes, and utilising materials that are wilful and difficult to control (e.g. balloons and fast-cast resins) my practice is rooted in the body and its way of understanding. My intention counters increasingly virtual ways of navigating the world and a growing remove from materiality. Pushing against the nature of materials and their designed functioning, I embrace the surprise and perversity that materialises to reference the accidental/incidental occurring in manufacture. Drawing attention to latent qualities and hidden agency within materials, I view this as an expansion of the industrial process where my improvised actions result in a more human sensibility. Excerpted from the artist’s statement.

Helen Hughes’ process initially involves much time researching materials, experimenting by folding, dripping, expanding and conjuring up many iterations of an idea in the studio before allowing the works to evolve with conviction. Some of these materials are robust and lasting but most are impossibly fragile.
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