by Chris Shaw Hughes
My current work explores the ‘site of trauma’. I’m interested in how some places are ‘defined’ by the events that happen within them, and whether the aura of trauma remains, either in the places, or in our representations of them.
Although I have made work using a diversity of media, I have recently been exploring the use of carbon paper as a medium. This has allowed me to investigate a kind of ‘negative’ aesthetic, which seems more appropriate when working with images of a traumatic, catastrophic or sublime nature.
I want people to look at my work and wonder why I have made it. Hopefully the image - and the way it has been produced - will start a process of questioning which will draw people into the work and enable them to find their own answers.
Selected Exhibitions
The Salon Art Prize, London, 2012The Future Can Wait, London, 2012
Cork Street Open, London, 2012
Outside The White Cube, Celebration of Sport, London, 2012
The Exchange, BLANK, Portslade, 2012
ROOM, London – Collaborators 2, 2011 and Collaborators 3, 2012
Cork Street Gallery, London – ArtErotica, 2012
London Art Fair with RiseArt, 2012
The New Contemporaries 2010, The A Foundation, Liverpool, 2010 and ICA, London, 2011
National Open Art Competition, Chichester, 2009, 2010, 2011
From the New Contemporaries 2010 catalogue:
“Fine, exquisite drawings, an overview of destruction and growth rendered at such a level of visual control [they] become questioned if not questionable in their endeavour.”
Curator of the London Art Fair Project Spaces, Pryle Behrman picks his ‘ones to watch’ for 2012:
“Chris Shaw Hughes at Rise Art produces incredibly detailed monochrome drawings derived from photographs of landscapes that bear the scars of historic conflicts.”