The Darlingest Place, Helen Hughes
Dublin Art Book Fair 2020
www.templebargallery.com/exhibitions/dublin-art-book-fair-2020
Flash! Helen Hughes
Dublin Art Book Fair 2019
https://www.templebargallery.com/exhibitions/dublin-art-book-fair-art-architecture
File Note III: Notions of a Quasi-Mystic Communism
Robert Herbert McClean
‘Let us return to detective novels.’ – Bertolt Brecht
Something like a shop front window being bricked
I heard someone call my namesake, I swung around in the mizzle to see Helen Hughes had found me in the grounds of DIT Grangegorman. Thankfully, I was not as lost now as the memory of the multi-story car park in which I’d abandoned my whip.
As we entered Summer Studios, the bon vivant brightness of Helen’s aura became pleasingly apparent as we sat down on a few fold-up chairs in her allocated, obliquely defined space.
Helen seemed to revel in an air of mischief, when considering the various angles that viewers may take of her art. At her most recent group show at VISUAL Carlow, a child punched a hole in one of her contributions.
As much as Helen’s previous work has disrupted industrial processes as we commonly perceive them, the works in progress that surround us resemble glossy ornaments, but they’re too uncanny, fancifully disturbing at the same time, like that Chris Cunningham video for Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker, where Richard D James’ skewed grimace is transposed onto the big booty bodies of a troupe of beautiful twerkers.
Helen’s sculptures are clever enough to converse with the creepy umbra of capital and come out not as the butt of the joke, but as the trickster telling the joke who has since shifted dimensions, is there but isn’t, isn’t there but is, leaving an ethereal, will-o’-the-wisp effect of cheek and knowingness, that only serves to endear the viewer to enjoy the joke afresh in admiration of the attitude.
Helen encourages the viewer to relish a hopefully revelatory moment, a moment taken to participate and engage with capitalist concepts and constructs differently. Desire is distorted in a voided modality, permitting us to consider consumerist driven, digitally hosted, financial markets defaulting, in a melting prism of irreconcilable glitches.
I imagine Helen inversely scaling up with showrooms that are like temporal theme parks, like IKEA on acid; shiny, reflective fluorescence, pastel paint, elegant metal sheens, useless decorations that dupe you by sheer virtue of their inventiveness; a false exchange-value by proxy of any purchase, as deterioration of the object was deliberately set in motion from the outset.
These objects are devoid of any possible misconception of potential functionality, they have absolutely no obvious utilitarian use, not even a hint, instead they prompt hilarity, acting as levelling devices, bringing an equality to all who wonder bemused at them, in befuddlement at their intangible eloquence, they act up, all goonish, like a mute pulling a funny face.
Thinking about that famous scene from Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin, where the protagonist can’t keep pace with the production rate of the conveyor belt, I consider Helen working with her materials and I feel a comparison is apt. Helen must work quickly against the rate of production set by her materials. It takes only four to five minutes for resin to set, so in effect, Helen’s process is a perpetual experimentalism, in which (she admits) there is lots of wastage in the wreckages she manufactures in the wake of her beautifully disarming sculptures.
Helen is interested in who has the authority to make the absolute decision as to how these materials, ingratiated in industrial processes, can be used outside of their original design and purpose. Helen disrupts the diktats of the capitalist narrative with her tragi-comic deconstruction of the factory with the incisive cleverness of the cultural critic.
I don’t think Helen has been averse to traditional sculpture techniques of production per se, but she has been maybe more reticent to use them than most in her field. Helen is driven by a more immediate conjuration of the art object, embracing being baffled herself by unexpected mistakism, a prominence for objects cast out of the normative order.
Helen’s impetus to produce appears dynamic and improvisational, but she did invest her time at FSAS to enable a transitional praxis in her work; moving from wooden frames or resin framing for her sculptures, (when she felt they necessitated it) to that of metal frames produced at FSAS using once avoided, traditional sculptural techniques.
I get the impression Helen will continue to sample techniques of traditional sculpture after this reassessment of their potential in her work, maybe like DJ Screw would if he had been a sculptor. In fact, Helen’s sculptures do have that sort of quality an object might take on if observed through the prism of a sizeable cup of sizzurp.
Helen shows me a piece of non-descript pink plastic, she says she can’t ever part with it and that she returns to meditate on its existence, often. I suggest to Helen that this sounds like she nurtures a talisman, that she is pronouncing a sentiment of protectionism, an authentic tenderness towards a fragment of disposable packaging via her own anthropomorphic projection.
Like a vase with its center of gravity smashed out, the studio suddenly becomes a fashion retail outlet, an alive exhibition space of faux commodity fetishism, wherein Helen and I are waiting for a phantastic model to come out of an adjacent inter-dimensional changing room, wearing one of Helen’s sculptures like a scarf. I can’t remember who said it, whether it was me or Helen; a good joke that’s hard to get is difficult in its telling.
(File Note III 2019, published by Firestation Artist Studios, Dublin)
www.firestation.ie
Something like a shop front window being bricked
I heard someone call my namesake, I swung around in the mizzle to see Helen Hughes had found me in the grounds of DIT Grangegorman. Thankfully, I was not as lost now as the memory of the multi-story car park in which I’d abandoned my whip.
As we entered Summer Studios, the bon vivant brightness of Helen’s aura became pleasingly apparent as we sat down on a few fold-up chairs in her allocated, obliquely defined space.
Helen seemed to revel in an air of mischief, when considering the various angles that viewers may take of her art. At her most recent group show at VISUAL Carlow, a child punched a hole in one of her contributions.
As much as Helen’s previous work has disrupted industrial processes as we commonly perceive them, the works in progress that surround us resemble glossy ornaments, but they’re too uncanny, fancifully disturbing at the same time, like that Chris Cunningham video for Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker, where Richard D James’ skewed grimace is transposed onto the big booty bodies of a troupe of beautiful twerkers.
Helen’s sculptures are clever enough to converse with the creepy umbra of capital and come out not as the butt of the joke, but as the trickster telling the joke who has since shifted dimensions, is there but isn’t, isn’t there but is, leaving an ethereal, will-o’-the-wisp effect of cheek and knowingness, that only serves to endear the viewer to enjoy the joke afresh in admiration of the attitude.
Helen encourages the viewer to relish a hopefully revelatory moment, a moment taken to participate and engage with capitalist concepts and constructs differently. Desire is distorted in a voided modality, permitting us to consider consumerist driven, digitally hosted, financial markets defaulting, in a melting prism of irreconcilable glitches.
I imagine Helen inversely scaling up with showrooms that are like temporal theme parks, like IKEA on acid; shiny, reflective fluorescence, pastel paint, elegant metal sheens, useless decorations that dupe you by sheer virtue of their inventiveness; a false exchange-value by proxy of any purchase, as deterioration of the object was deliberately set in motion from the outset.
These objects are devoid of any possible misconception of potential functionality, they have absolutely no obvious utilitarian use, not even a hint, instead they prompt hilarity, acting as levelling devices, bringing an equality to all who wonder bemused at them, in befuddlement at their intangible eloquence, they act up, all goonish, like a mute pulling a funny face.
Thinking about that famous scene from Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin, where the protagonist can’t keep pace with the production rate of the conveyor belt, I consider Helen working with her materials and I feel a comparison is apt. Helen must work quickly against the rate of production set by her materials. It takes only four to five minutes for resin to set, so in effect, Helen’s process is a perpetual experimentalism, in which (she admits) there is lots of wastage in the wreckages she manufactures in the wake of her beautifully disarming sculptures.
Helen is interested in who has the authority to make the absolute decision as to how these materials, ingratiated in industrial processes, can be used outside of their original design and purpose. Helen disrupts the diktats of the capitalist narrative with her tragi-comic deconstruction of the factory with the incisive cleverness of the cultural critic.
I don’t think Helen has been averse to traditional sculpture techniques of production per se, but she has been maybe more reticent to use them than most in her field. Helen is driven by a more immediate conjuration of the art object, embracing being baffled herself by unexpected mistakism, a prominence for objects cast out of the normative order.
Helen’s impetus to produce appears dynamic and improvisational, but she did invest her time at FSAS to enable a transitional praxis in her work; moving from wooden frames or resin framing for her sculptures, (when she felt they necessitated it) to that of metal frames produced at FSAS using once avoided, traditional sculptural techniques.
I get the impression Helen will continue to sample techniques of traditional sculpture after this reassessment of their potential in her work, maybe like DJ Screw would if he had been a sculptor. In fact, Helen’s sculptures do have that sort of quality an object might take on if observed through the prism of a sizeable cup of sizzurp.
Helen shows me a piece of non-descript pink plastic, she says she can’t ever part with it and that she returns to meditate on its existence, often. I suggest to Helen that this sounds like she nurtures a talisman, that she is pronouncing a sentiment of protectionism, an authentic tenderness towards a fragment of disposable packaging via her own anthropomorphic projection.
Like a vase with its center of gravity smashed out, the studio suddenly becomes a fashion retail outlet, an alive exhibition space of faux commodity fetishism, wherein Helen and I are waiting for a phantastic model to come out of an adjacent inter-dimensional changing room, wearing one of Helen’s sculptures like a scarf. I can’t remember who said it, whether it was me or Helen; a good joke that’s hard to get is difficult in its telling.
(File Note III 2019, published by Firestation Artist Studios, Dublin)
www.firestation.ie
A Bounce Borrowed, The Dock
Joanne Laws Features Editor, Visual Artist's Ireland News Sheet
The expansive windows of Gallery One have been blacked out with long, dark curtains. Spot-lighting of individual artworks further conspires to create a theatrical atmosphere. Despite the fact that Helen Hughes specifically describes her work as ultra-modern and largely unconcerned with history, it is difficult to read her artworks explicitly in this way. For me, they inhabit a much more ambiguous timeframe. A Bold Complement (2017) is a long and flowing swathe of acrid green cellophane which glistens in the dimly-lit alcove. It could easily be admired for its ultra-modern, tactile plasticity, in the way one might marvel at shrink-wrapped meat, in all its compressed, synthetic glory. Yet something about the encounter calls to mind medieval silk cloaks, pagan shrouds or some other garment retaining the history of its own performance. At the side of the arch, non-descript sculptural bundles hang ominously, like the superstitious Irish piseogs, frequently tacked to doors and land boundaries to ward against misfortune.
Some of the smaller works presented also appear to fluctuate between time-zones. Whilst the slick materiality of Double your Breathing Capacity (2017) is unequivocally modern, even futuristic, its objecthood seems to hark back to the past, as if in search for a more suitable language to anchor it. The dual sculptures’ ultra- glossy resin veneer coolly exudes a 1970s aura of gaudy ornaments and patterned glassware. The grey piece is spliced with cerise lines which ripple and dart across its surface, while its counterpart takes on a conch-like form, its buckled, unfurling ivory surfaces retaining the shape of some recently-departed crustacean. This fleeting reference to organic matter ventures closer towards the artists’ intentions for the work, with signage indicating that these pieces “will degrade over time”.
In an otherwise static presentation, movement is generated by Stronger than Dirt (2016) – a kinetic piece fabricated in sherbet lemon yellow cellophane that rotates as gently as a lackadaisical windmill. Rather than using traditional gallery plinths, the artist has fabricated simple Ikea-esque plywood tables – a form of display perhaps more closely associated with boutique interiors. This presentation strategy finally discloses the artists’ earnest obsession: the seductive surfaces of retail. Borrowing inspiration from mass-produced consumer goods and dispensable packaging, Hughes manipulates industrially-manufactured materials in a range of synthetic colours, smuggling functionless, wonderfully fetishistic objects into the gallery setting.
(Exhibition text - The Dock Gallery, 2017)
www.thedock.ie
Some of the smaller works presented also appear to fluctuate between time-zones. Whilst the slick materiality of Double your Breathing Capacity (2017) is unequivocally modern, even futuristic, its objecthood seems to hark back to the past, as if in search for a more suitable language to anchor it. The dual sculptures’ ultra- glossy resin veneer coolly exudes a 1970s aura of gaudy ornaments and patterned glassware. The grey piece is spliced with cerise lines which ripple and dart across its surface, while its counterpart takes on a conch-like form, its buckled, unfurling ivory surfaces retaining the shape of some recently-departed crustacean. This fleeting reference to organic matter ventures closer towards the artists’ intentions for the work, with signage indicating that these pieces “will degrade over time”.
In an otherwise static presentation, movement is generated by Stronger than Dirt (2016) – a kinetic piece fabricated in sherbet lemon yellow cellophane that rotates as gently as a lackadaisical windmill. Rather than using traditional gallery plinths, the artist has fabricated simple Ikea-esque plywood tables – a form of display perhaps more closely associated with boutique interiors. This presentation strategy finally discloses the artists’ earnest obsession: the seductive surfaces of retail. Borrowing inspiration from mass-produced consumer goods and dispensable packaging, Hughes manipulates industrially-manufactured materials in a range of synthetic colours, smuggling functionless, wonderfully fetishistic objects into the gallery setting.
(Exhibition text - The Dock Gallery, 2017)
www.thedock.ie
Altered Objects
Helen Hughes
(Regional Profile - Visual Artists Ireland News Sheet, 2017)
I live in Dun Laoghaire and currently work from a studio in RUA RED Arts Centre in Tallaght. Originally from Mayo, my introduction to art was in London where I completed a BA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. When I returned to Ireland, I settled in Dún Laoghaire and commenced an MA in Visual Arts Practices (now ARC: Art & Research Collaboration) at the Institute of Art and Design Technology (IADT), Dún Laoghaire. This two-year programme provided me with an introduction to what was (for me) a new city, whilst also allowing me to develop new friendships and professional connections in Dublin. As an artist, I make predominantly sculptural work. Mostly, I use expendable materials from modern mass-production systems. I use both found objects and industrial materials and often create artworks in response to specific sites. The colour I use in my work tends to be quite pronounced and is often innate to the materials.
In 2016, I responded to a Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council open call and was subsequently supported to produce a new body of work for an exhibition at the newly-built Lexicon Library in Dún Laoghaire. This two-person show with artist Felicity Clear (including curatorial support from Brenda McParland) was titled ‘Amongst Other Things’. We were encouraged to respond to the space and architecture of the new building and to consider the mix of visitors: those from the arts community; those who might drift in from the library and so on. As a resident of Dún Laoghaire, I was aware of some public disaffection with the realisation of the library. Some locals considered it overly extravagant, at a time when soaring rates for retail premises in the area meant the high street was increasingly littered with vacant shops. Personally, I loved the ambition and optimism of the library, both as a municipal resource and a wedge of gigantic contemporary architecture, looming over the existing Victorian buildings. Both Felicity Clear and I reference architecture and building materials in our respective practices, and we therefore felt a strong connection to the new library building.
The work I produced for this exhibition referenced hidden systems within cities. This brand-new gallery space presents classic examples of highly-refined surfaces typical of modern architecture. My work emphasises fluid and gestural manipulation of (mostly) systemised building materials, to draw attention to latent qualities in mass-produced goods. In the context of this new building – with its huge volume of visitors – my use of repurposed materials highlighted the hidden aspects of space that we passively navigate every day.
Electing to work with familiar materials and commodities such as polystyrene, plastic, resins and balloons, I altered their appearance using the basic skills of removing, adding and recasting. As a result, these materials no longer had the homogenous appearance of industrial products. Sometimes disguising, sometimes revealing, materials and objects begin to mimic each other and other things. I view this tactile approach as an expansion of the industrial process, deploying a vision that’s more human in scale and sensibility. Adding my own layers of history, I present combinations of altered objects and relations that might connect with the viewer through common narratives of memory and subjectivity.
Titles are integral to my work and are often borrowed from a number of typical mass-media sources. For example, For the men in charge of change was an archaic tagline used by the multinational business magazine Fortune, while Grace, Space, Pace was taken from an advertising campaign for Jaguar cars. As a kind of inverse endorsement, I facetiously couple these curious messages from branding culture with my efforts to repurpose mass-manufactured materials.
As was the case with the Lexicon commission, I value the influence of a strong context when developing new work and the challenges presented by the scale and energy of a pre-existing site. I use these elements as parameters to lead my practice in unanticipated directions. The Dún Laoghaire work responded to a modern, pristine space, whereas the work I developed for TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2016, for example, was for a large concrete and glass retail unit in Galway city. This space was ten years old, but it had never been properly finished or used for its intended purpose. At The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon earlier this year, I used fragile, expendable materials to produce delicate, fetishistic cellophane and balloon sculptures, so that their glossy, reflective appearance might tease the classic style of the surroundings, their ephemerality at odds with the imposing, period architecture.
www.visualartists.ie
In 2016, I responded to a Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council open call and was subsequently supported to produce a new body of work for an exhibition at the newly-built Lexicon Library in Dún Laoghaire. This two-person show with artist Felicity Clear (including curatorial support from Brenda McParland) was titled ‘Amongst Other Things’. We were encouraged to respond to the space and architecture of the new building and to consider the mix of visitors: those from the arts community; those who might drift in from the library and so on. As a resident of Dún Laoghaire, I was aware of some public disaffection with the realisation of the library. Some locals considered it overly extravagant, at a time when soaring rates for retail premises in the area meant the high street was increasingly littered with vacant shops. Personally, I loved the ambition and optimism of the library, both as a municipal resource and a wedge of gigantic contemporary architecture, looming over the existing Victorian buildings. Both Felicity Clear and I reference architecture and building materials in our respective practices, and we therefore felt a strong connection to the new library building.
The work I produced for this exhibition referenced hidden systems within cities. This brand-new gallery space presents classic examples of highly-refined surfaces typical of modern architecture. My work emphasises fluid and gestural manipulation of (mostly) systemised building materials, to draw attention to latent qualities in mass-produced goods. In the context of this new building – with its huge volume of visitors – my use of repurposed materials highlighted the hidden aspects of space that we passively navigate every day.
Electing to work with familiar materials and commodities such as polystyrene, plastic, resins and balloons, I altered their appearance using the basic skills of removing, adding and recasting. As a result, these materials no longer had the homogenous appearance of industrial products. Sometimes disguising, sometimes revealing, materials and objects begin to mimic each other and other things. I view this tactile approach as an expansion of the industrial process, deploying a vision that’s more human in scale and sensibility. Adding my own layers of history, I present combinations of altered objects and relations that might connect with the viewer through common narratives of memory and subjectivity.
Titles are integral to my work and are often borrowed from a number of typical mass-media sources. For example, For the men in charge of change was an archaic tagline used by the multinational business magazine Fortune, while Grace, Space, Pace was taken from an advertising campaign for Jaguar cars. As a kind of inverse endorsement, I facetiously couple these curious messages from branding culture with my efforts to repurpose mass-manufactured materials.
As was the case with the Lexicon commission, I value the influence of a strong context when developing new work and the challenges presented by the scale and energy of a pre-existing site. I use these elements as parameters to lead my practice in unanticipated directions. The Dún Laoghaire work responded to a modern, pristine space, whereas the work I developed for TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2016, for example, was for a large concrete and glass retail unit in Galway city. This space was ten years old, but it had never been properly finished or used for its intended purpose. At The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon earlier this year, I used fragile, expendable materials to produce delicate, fetishistic cellophane and balloon sculptures, so that their glossy, reflective appearance might tease the classic style of the surroundings, their ephemerality at odds with the imposing, period architecture.
www.visualartists.ie