C H R I S S H A W H U G H E S

34 Roselands Avenue, Eastbourne, BN22 8PP

www.chris-shaw-hughes.com

Instagram @chrisshawhughes

My practice revolves ‘artistically’ around the engagements between older, more traditional forms of making art and other, newer mediums - primarily, but not exclusively photography - and the ways in which we are affected by the mass media’s treatment of news events especially those involving trauma.

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 sublime, catastrophic or traumatic nature.

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. Aerial views, the descent to the bottom of the unfinished tower in Dubai worked backwards to engage with architectural language, the blueprint, the old method of rubbing Xerox paper to bring positive out of negative.”

Curator of the London Art Fair, 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.”

Selected Exhibitions
100 Photographs, 35Blumen, Krefeld, Germany (solo), 2019
Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize, Finalist, London 2019
Let's Talk About The Anthropocene, University of Brighton, 2019

Collaborators 5: The Hand of the Artist (ROAMING ROOM), London, 2018
ING Discerning Eye, Mall Gallery, London, 2018

KINO, 35Blumen, Krefeld, Germany (solo), 2015
Science Museum, London – Works on Paper Fair, 2015
Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, London, 2015
Emergency Prize (finalist), Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, 2015

Love & Marriage, Blumen35, Krefeld, Germany, 2014
Ruskin Drawing Prize, Sheffield and London, 2014
Drawing: From Here to There, Colorado and Swansea, 2014

Possession, Bangkok and Coventry, 2013
RA Summer Exhibition, London, 2013, 2016
Est. 1690, Division of Labour, Worcester and Malvern, 2013
Mostyn Open, Llandudno, 2013
Salon Art Prize, London, 2013

The Future Can Wait, London, 2012
Cork Street Gallery, London – ArtErotica, 2012
London Art Fair with RiseArt, 2012

Brighton Festival Fringe - Poker Night, 2011
London Art Fair with ROOM, 2011
ICA, London – Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2010 - 2011

A Foundation, Liverpool – Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2010
ROOM, London – Collaborators 2, 2010
BLANK, Portslade – Point BLANK, 2010
Worthing Museum & Art Gallery – Adur Art Collective, 2010
St Paul’s Church, Brighton – Congregation, 2010

The Artworks Gallery, Newcastle – Great Britain, 2009
Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham-by-Sea – The Living Landscape, 2009
Minerva Theatre, Chichester – English National Art Open, 2009

thirtyfive-a, Brighton – We won’t get fooled again oh yes you will oh no we won’t oh what the hell, 2007

Publications

Journal of the Arts Society, Newnham College – Bodies of Work: Women in the Arts II, 2010
PLAYGROUND Issues I & 4 2009/10

Events

Brighton Art Fair, 2009. Showing ‘Heat’
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/whats-on/news/brighton-art-fair/christopher-r-hughes
White Nights, Brighton – 30 Seconds of Fortune, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMFf3pVnRFI
Education and Work

MA with Distinction in Fine Art at University of Brighton, 2008 - 2010

BA Hons (First Class) in Critical Fine Art Practice at University of Brighton,
2005 –2008

27 years working in the Advertising industry as Art Director and Creative Director, 1978 – 2005

College of Art & Design Eastbourne studying Graphics, 1973 - 1977

Portfolio: