Hannah Hughes – Trio (Position I), Mirror Image #43, 2020
Hannah Hughes is a visual artist working across photography, collage and sculpture. Her work explores the relationship between image, sculpture and language, focusing on the potential of negative space, and the salvaging and re-use of discarded materials. Her research takes root from histories of recycling and archaeology of discarded materials, where value is found on the sidelines. It is in part a response to !Femmage #(a feminist term coined by Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer in the 1970s to describe covert art practices from matter found in the home), reconsidering our relationship to domestic materials today, and how these can be saved and re- configured.
Hughes’s practice involves strategies of fragmentation and reconstruction. Her two-dimensional collages are often described as either flat sculptures or sculptural photographs. The shapes in the collages originate from outside edges and negative areas surrounding figures and objects, which have evolved into an ongoing regenerative alphabet of forms.
She uses materials that invite the memory of everyday touch, such as paper stocks used in glossy magazines, pulp packaging, and clay. This focus on tactility positions the work in relation to the boundaries of the body, and the spaces created where bodies intersect with their surroundings.
She examines edges within the photographic image, capturing movement through internal layers and seams. For example, In her most recent series of two-part C-Type collages, one form intersects the surface of another creating a visible border within the photograph, which can be viewed fully from the side.
Hannah Hughes (b. 1975) graduated from the University of Brighton in 1997 and has since exhibited in the UK and internationally.
https://www.hannah-hughes.com
Robert Morat Galerie
www.robertmorat.de
Photo London 2022
12 – 15 May 2022
Somerset House
www.photolondon.org
