Hannah Hughes

Hannah Hughes Outer Movements [Paper Porcelain casts], 2022 Ceramic sculptures (unique), steel base 20.5×7×7 cm

Hannah Hughes, Tuck XV, 2023, Archival pigment printed papers, 40x43.6cm, Unique collage (c) Hannah Hughes, courtesy of Robert Morat Galerie

Hannah Hughes (b. 1975) is a London-based visual artist working across collage, photography and sculpture. Her work explores relationships between image, form and language, focusing on the potential of negative space, and the salvaging and re-use of found 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 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 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 images of peripheral, ‘negative’ areas surrounding figures and objects, which have evolved into an ongoing regenerative alphabet of forms. In these, she examines edges within the photographic image through cuts, layers and seams, intersecting their surfaces and creating internal borders to be viewed fully through movement.

She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Gloucestershire, and her practice-based research centres around processes of fragmentation and strategies of re-fitting within the areas of collage, sculptural photography and ceramic sculpture. Hughes graduated from the University of Brighton in 1997 and her work has since been exhibited internationally. Her first book Mirror Image was published by Jane & Jeremy in 2023; and she has participated in two collaborative publications with artist Dafna Talmor, Glossaries, published by Folium in association with Sid Motion Gallery, (2023) and Glossaries II, as part of Emic Units 1, published by Shibboleth, 2023). Her work is included in Material Immaterial, (2018-20) an experimental publication by Rodrigo Orrantia, which has included live presentations at Cosmos, Arles and Offprint, Paris; and Look At This If You Love Great Photography: A critical curation of 100 essential photos by Gemma Padley, (Ivy Press, 2021).

Selected Exhibitions

Solid Slip, Robert Morat Galerie, Berlin, Germany (2024)

Glossaries: Hannah Hughes & Dafna Talmor, Sid Motion Gallery, London (2022-23)

Monochrome, Coleman Projects, London (2022)

The State of Things, Landskrona Foto Festival, Sweden (2022) Photo50: No Place is an Island, curated by Rodrigo Orrantia, London Art Fair (2022)

An eXhibition of SMALL things with BIG ideas, White Conduit Projects, London (2022)

Entractes #15, The Eye Sees, Arles, France (2021)

Summer Camp, Eastside Projects, Stream digital online platform (2021)

Gleaners: Olivia Bax & Hannah Hughes, Sid Motion Gallery, London (2020)

Super Flatland, White Conduit Projects, London (2020)

New Formations, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, USA (2020)

The Office of Revised Futures, Format International Photography Festival, Derby (2019)

The Truth in Disguise, Geste, Paris, France (2019)

A Romance of Many Dimensions, Sid Motion Gallery, London (2018)

The Momentum, curated by Saturation Point Projects, Angus-Hughes Gallery, London (2018)

Concealer, curated by Tom Lovelace, Peckham 24, Copeland Gallery, London (2018)

These Fingers Read Sideways, (Monomatic), Fettes College, Edinburgh (2018)

Where One Form Began Another Ended: Hannah Hughes & Darius Stein, The Bakery Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada (2016)

Tuck VI, unique C Type, 2023

Tuck XX, unique C Type, 2023

Type XIX, unique C Type, 2023

Time At Hogchester Arts

My visit in January 2024 began with a winter storm, and in the calm of the following day my introduction to Charmouth beach revealed tongues of liquid mud lapping down the cliffs to the shore.

I used the week’s residency to finish some works for an upcoming exhibition in Berlin, but also spent time walking in the landscape and taking in the geology of the coastline, reading about the formation of the cliff strata and thinking about the materials released from the ground in its liquified state. In walks with Charlotte and Chantal we visited the ammonite beds at Lyme Regis, but also sought out the areas of beach around the Spittles and East Cliff where evidence could be found of former local rubbish tips, with scattered ceramic sherds, glass and other more contemporary rusting deposits spilled among the stones.

I was interested in the shifting context of the items seen on the beach, the sequential processes of burial, slippage and release, and connections to the practice of spoliation where the discarded fragments appeared to have become absorbed into the natural sea defence. Back in the studio these ideas have been finding their way into new research using ceramic sherds and waste materials, developing methods of burial and excavation through casting, cutting and layering, to generate new forms and propositions for use.

The show title for Berlin became Solid Slip.

Thank you to Chantal and Charlotte for a really wonderful week, to all at Hogchester Farm for the generous invitation to stay in this amazing place - and of course to Piper for being an excellent beach guide.