Sara Hughes SCALES OF ECONOMY
1 - 25 July 2008
Sara Hughes is an artist compelled to inhabit the capricious edges of what painting might be. Her obsessions splinter out from hybrid ideas around arcane information technologies, nasty computer viruses, codings, weaving patterns, networks, assorted digital communication systems and the chimerical tricks of optical perception.
Rhana Devenport, Artlink, Vol 26, no 3, 2006
Having just returned to New Zealand after a year in the United States undertaking two international art residencies, Sara Hughes returns to Gow Langsford Gallery to exhibit new paintings in Scales of Economy.
The works in this exhibition explore the artist’s interest in patterns of behaviour and configurations of consumerism. While in the US, Hughes became fascinated by the current political climate and the issues surrounding the hotly contested Democratic Primary Elections and their associated costs alongside the pending economic crisis. This compelled her to analyse how colour is used for both economic and political means, from supermarkets to CNN. Hughes’ paintings reference issues and concepts that are also connected to a wider global phenomenon. Using text, digits, colour and guilloché patterns the artist interrogates everyday messages and actions. The works allude to aspects of wealth distribution, hegemonic structures and currency value and reflect a variety of economic transactions from the stock exchange to the garage sale.
Sara Hughes is a New Zealand artist who has exhibited consistently since graduating from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2001. Hughes’ paintings and installations are held in many significant Australasian public and private collections including the Chartwell Collection, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland and the National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Recent commissions include site specific works for Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand and for Multiplex in Sydney. In 2005 Hughes won two of New Zealand’s premier art awards; the Norsewear Art Award and the Wallace Art Award and in the same year her work was featured in Richard Kalina’s Art in America article ‘Report from New Zealand’. In 2007 she was awarded a six month residency at The International Studio and Curatorial Program ISCP in New York and in 2008 a three month residency at McColl Centre for Visual Art. In 2008 Hughes embarked upon a major commission for the ‘Glasshouse’ project, a new site specific installation of new work for the lobby of the Christchurch City Art Gallery, curated by Justin Paton. Hughes was recently announced as the first New Zealand recipient of the RIPE:Art & Australia Magazine/ANZ Private Bank Contemporary Art Award which will see her work featured in a spread of a forthcoming issue of the magazine and one of her works purchased for the Art & Australia Magazine collection.
