Lizzie Hughes
Lizzie Hughes is a sculptor whose work includes sound, video and installation. Her recent sculptures made from precious metals, wood and cellophane stem from a residency in a historic gold mining town in New South Wales, Australia. The work includes a pure gold net held aloft by silver forks; fragile frameworks supporting nothing more than voids and structures that could suggest archaic tools or vernacular fencing. The treacherous holes left behind in the heavily mined Australian (and Welsh) landscapes, that feed into this work, provide charged voids hinting at the riches that were once abundant and the spoils left behind.
Previous work has seen her collecting and then structuring large quantities of data allowing her to remotely explore distant landscapes and briefly enter the private worlds of others. To this end, she has made an audio portrait of The Empire State Building by telephoning and speaking to office workers on each of its eighty floors; an electronic map that shows the graphic outlines of over thirty nine thousand swimming pools located in the city of Las Vegas and 4,007 Horizons a video work that transforms generic seaside snapshots into a dazzling journey around the globe.
The Weather in Paris in 1909, is a collection of picture postcards all sent from Paris in the year 1909. The cards are unified by their handwritten messages referring to the state of the weather at the time of writing. The consistent notes about sunshine, wind, rain and snow are interspersed with fragments of other people’s lives from which we can infer a plethora of private narratives.
EDUCATION
2000 - 2002 Slade School of Fine Art, University College London MFA Fine Art – Sculpture
1993 – 1997 Slade School of Fine Art, University College London BA (Hon) Fine Art – Sculpture
1991 – 1992 Coleg Menai, Bangor, Gwynedd Foundation in Art and Design
RESIDENCIES
2018
The National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire, UK
Crefftwerk, CALL, Llandudno, Wales
2017
Murray’s Cottage, Hill End, NSW run by Bathurst Regional Gallery, NSW, Australia
2016
The Art House, Wakefield, UK
2013
The William Morris Gallery, London, UK
2011
Escalator Retreat– Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK
2005-2010
ACME Fire Station Residency, London, UK
2005
Vent Live Art Residency – OVADA, Oxford, UK
AWARDS
2000
The Mostyn Open prize
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND SCREENINGS
2024
Long the Night and Cold The Weather to Wait - Galeri, Caernarfon
2023
A Thousand Fibres Connect Us – Unit 3, London
2022
40+1 Sylfaen Celf Bangor– Storiel, Bangor
2021
Thank You and I Mean That Very Sincerely – 303 Projects, Lowestoft
2019
Blue Mind – 3rd on 3rd Gallery, Jamestown, New York, USA
Agored 2019 – Galeri, Caernarfon
2018
Making Peace – The National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire
Postcards from The End – Hill End, New South Wales, Australia
2017
Miles of Creativity – Mostyn, Llandudno
Infinite Multiple – PI Artworks, London
Tornado Sands – Arcade East, London
2016 Museum – The Art House, Wakefield (solo exhibition)
2014
Revolver II - Matt's Gallery, London
Ghost of a Ghost - The William Morris Gallery, London
2013
Film in Space (Anthology) – Camden Arts Centre, London
2012
The Present Is a Point Just Passed – The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich University, London (exhibited in and curated the exhibition)
2011
Digitalis - Animate Projects, commissioned work premiered at the BFI London
Concrete Poetry – Hayward Gallery, London
2010
Lizzie Hughes, Video Works – Broadway Media Centre, Nottingham
Present Technology – Kingston University, London
2009
Elsewhere III – Atelier Marcel Dinahet, Rennes, France
A Very Loud Silence – Aquaspace Gallery, Atlanta, USA
Stations – The String Room Gallery, Aurora, New York
Ailleurs II – Five Years, London
Transfixed Motion/Transitory Still - Sheffield Institute of Art and Design, Sheffield
195 Miles – PSL, Leeds (in collaboration with The Whitechapel Gallery
2008
Slow Glass – Lisa Cooley, New York
If You Build It They Will Come – G39, Cardiff
Transhift08 – A1 LabArts, Knoxville, Tennessee
2007
VAD Festival Internacional de Video i Arts Digitals – Centre Cultural la Mercè, Girona, Spain
Do Billboards Dream of Electric Screens? –outdoor screening in Melbourne, Australia and (and tour)
2006
Arcade – Westbourne Studios, London
>Over – G39, Cardiff
2005
Rub Out The Word – d.u.m.b.o. arts centre, New York
Peculiar Encounters – E1 Arts Space, London
2004
East End Academy – Whitechapel Gallery, London - commissioned work
For the Time Being – Victoria Baths, Manchester – commissioned work
2003
Ailleurs/Elsewhere – Museum of Installation, London
2002
A Measure of Reality – Kettle’s Yard, Cambridg
Toys II – Kagan Martos, New York
2001
New Contemporaries 2001 – Camden Arts Centre and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art
2000
Mostyn Open 11 – Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno
