Sara Hughes

Going public

For Sara Hughes and her brilliantly colourful work, home is where the art is.Sara Hughes has her studio in Avondale, adjacent to her house. In plan, it is a slightly irregular rectangle, to fit the section; a busy railway line runs alongside. It was built about six years ago, to her requirements. “I wanted as much wall space as the site could fit, and no windows in the walls. After having lots of dark industrial spaces or rabbit-warren studios, it’s nice to have a lot of light. Much of the work that I do has a particular resonance with colour, so it’s good to be able to see it clearly.’
Plans and preliminary drawings are pinned around the studio walls, and illuminated by skylights. Elsewhere are tables covered with painting materials, a large scale model and several canvases turned to the wall, awaiting further attention. Hughes’ workspace extends to her house, where she has ‘clean’ areas for her computer and related equipment. She is currently preparing several large projects to show in public institutions, and such activity also goes well beyond her own workspaces. Importantly, although these projects begin their lives and are developed here, they cannot be considered complete until they are installed in the gallery space. Hughes regards that last stage as vital, for there can be ‘a real physical making process on site’.
At the time of our visit, one corner of Hughes’s studio was taken over by a forest of turned wooden standard lamps, part of her forthcoming installation ‘For Kultur’ at the Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery. This project is her response to selected objects from that institution’s collection, as well as to concepts of collecting and contemporary museums in general. The required number of lamps has been obtained by various means, among them a recent development in the history of collecting, Trade Me. Their upper (shade) sections will be used as supports for a series of crafted elements, designed and made by Hughes and assembled by a specialist.
Hughes makes most of the elements in her installations herself, which allows her to be ‘a bit looser and experimental’. She regards her studio as ‘a laboratory in some ways in terms of all the different projects going on at the same time. It’s good just to be able to go in there and quickly cut or paint something, or mock up something’.
She accepts the need to acquire new skills as she undertakes different challenges: ‘Sometimes it’s helpful to involve other people when you don’t know how to do things. For me, an interesting part of the process is working with specialists and finding the right person who’s prepared to look into this and develop that. That’s on one side of the process, and then on the other side it’s very hands-on, like cutting up something with a pair of scissors, for example. It moves between very different sorts of processes. And when I’m using a new material, I often get to think of other possibilities and ways to understand it.’
Hughes personally selected treasures from the Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery’s collection to be incorporated in her installation. Exposure to such material is likely to stimulate further ideas and creativity, as was the case when she was Frances Hodgkins’ Fellow in Dunedin in 2003: “I visited a friend who lived in a cottage called Little Paisley, and that name ignited a particular idea that ended up relating to that year’s work, and beyond. It was interesting to research the history of the paisley pattern, from India to the production of shawls in Paisley, Scotland, and the associated aspects of trade and migration. You have to be open for those surprises coming up – sometimes in the most unplanned way.”
Because of the proximity of home and studio, Hughes tends to work at “all different times of day and night” and operates across a range of activities, from scissors to keyboard and paintbrushes. ‘It’s useful to be close, and to have a cleaner office space inside for my computer and screens, because it would be impractical in the studio. It doesn’t work to have it in the same space – I guess it’s just different practicalities. When I’m painting, there’s water everywhere, so it’s good to have that separation.’ And while working on a computer screen – which can involve a large amount of writing, in addition to drawing and scanning – she finds she is ‘thinking in a different way than with a ruler and a piece of tape’. The physical separation between the computer area and the ‘hands-on’ working space has resulted in a ‘back and forward’ studio practice, one that allows her to approach ideas and concepts from widely different angles.
Painting was an important part of Sara Hughes’s training, and continues to influence the way she looks at the world. She is intrigued by the possibilities of painting– its ‘histories and contemporary incarnations – but resists being pigeonholed. History shows that painters have always responded to the potential of new technologies. In her case, what she may have in common with the ancient tradition of painting is pigment, but brush and canvas are likely to be superseded by computer, or vinyl, or some other means or material as demanded by her idea.