Monday 25 February 2013

Gareth Hughes: Artist

Undecided
This post is a reflection upon my recent meeting with visiting lecturer named Gareth Hughes. I recently decided to look him up, and found what is hopefully his work.
I was surprised at the images I found, and felt it has a kindred interest to conversations.

The bolder use of colour in these works made me reflect on our talk. He was very keen on the pixels, which we decided were not pixels at all, but squares, repeated shapes, of paint.
It reminded him of colour scheme exercises from his tuition, and advised I looked into Sean Scully.

I did but, I feel more inclined to continue the 'conversation' pieces, all my research is leading towards a modern perception within a frame.



The dream II
The stills were a successful work:
they removed me from the over indulgence of conversations whilst investigating the still, the frame in a new way.
Now, having seen his own work, I realise what that frame did for me.
It is key to focusing my subject, and gives it a vital contaxt.

Yet, stills inverted this by removing their frames, their static formats, and this was what made their transitory rendering so engaging.

How can I possibly combine the two, when my work revolves around defining a frame or removing it.





the swirl

More so this piece than any shown here, Swirl reminds me of the relationship
between observation of a subject and its composition.
When I gave myself a boundary, I could retain focus in a shape or plane.
It was like a canvas for in a way. The moving image threw up nuances on the screen,
to be drawn out into a form composed by time and self-perception.
What if I tried a mirror, or window frames?
What if I changed the shape to a ballistic movement?
Should I remove the lens of the camera as a parameter?
The success of stills has informed how my work engages with its audience,
as well as developed my work from being too compositional, too over worked.
Combining the tactile engagement of stills, I could draw from different video pieces or even
from live through another framework.

So my work investigates how the frame informs the human template.

sleeper
sleepwalker
 Looking to two more works by Hughes, his more surreal takes on the subject of sleep reflects the boundless capacity of the unconcious mind.
Loose, colourful, forms slipping in and out of shape across the plane.

They are beautiful, but would probably better inform my work outside of the studio.
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