Des Hughes
Des Hughes was born in Birmingham in 1970. His work bears witness to an obsessive, physical enquiry into the materials, methods, and traditions of sculpture. Hughes re-thinks conventional sculptural materials such as plaster, marble, bronze and clay. Nothing is at it first appears. For example, crudely modelled clay is meticulously cast in resin but, with the inclusion of marble dust, it may appear to have been carved and polished form a block of stone or fashioned from a piece of chewing gum. At the same time Hughes also considers the purpose or meaning of sculpture - from a functional doorstep to the sacred effigy such as lies at the center of 'Endless Endless'. Traditions are revised as Hughes rethinks ecclesiastical equipment and relics as macabre, joke-shop props or as Modern, abstract sculptural forms (and vice versa). He is also fascinated by the strangeness of British art, whether it be primitive art, strange craft objects or the reinvention of landscape, still life in British Surrealism and modernist British sculptural history. He has guest curated an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery and has been longlisted for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London.
Hughes' work has been the subject of major solo exhibitions …
Des Hughes was born in Birmingham in 1970. His work bears witness to an obsessive, physical enquiry into the materials, methods, and traditions of sculpture. Hughes re-thinks conventional sculptural materials such as plaster, marble, bronze and clay. Nothing is at it first appears. For example, crudely modelled clay is meticulously cast in resin but, with the inclusion of marble dust, it may appear to have been carved and polished form a block of stone or fashioned from a piece of chewing gum. At the same time Hughes also considers the purpose or meaning of sculpture - from a functional doorstep to the sacred effigy such as lies at the center of 'Endless Endless'. Traditions are revised as Hughes rethinks ecclesiastical equipment and relics as macabre, joke-shop props or as Modern, abstract sculptural forms (and vice versa). He is also fascinated by the strangeness of British art, whether it be primitive art, strange craft objects or the reinvention of landscape, still life in British Surrealism and modernist British sculptural history. He has guest curated an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery and has been longlisted for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London.
Hughes' work has been the subject of major solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (2005); Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (2008); Frieze Art Fair (2010); Nottingham Contemporary (2010); Ancient and Modern, London (2012); Buchmann Galerie, Berlin (2013); Manchester Art Gallery (2013); The Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, UK (2014); and the Hepworth Wakefield, UK (2015-Spring 2016).
Courtesy of Galerie Simpson
