Nathan Hughes, Those With Eyes to Seethe (detail), 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.
Nathan Hughes
Gallery 1B
Friday 23 February - Sunday 17 March
Opening Thursday 22 February 2024, 6pm - 8pm
Nathan makes art to reflect how it feels to live at this weird moment in space/time. Wry humour, picaresque metafictions and falter-ego characters combine to skewer the poignant absurdities of human folly and hydrocarbon hubris vis-à-vis anthropogenic climate collapse. Quixotic fables of loss, rejuvenation, and socio-ecological trauma are refracted through diverse materials (bandages, heavily degraded found objects, foam, mystery juice), and a creative process that prioritises instinct over intellect. Figurative mixed media works filter autobiographical speculations through Spaghetti Westerns and Polish film posters in ludic collisions of myth, mind and screen.
The Absurd Frontier locates Dr Narwhal, Pewps the dog and misanthropic mule Kill me Kwik, in a retro-futurist hybrid of contemporary suburbia and dystopian science fiction cinema/TV. Profiterolé of Doom riffs on the harbinger horror film trope and Greek Mythology’s Cassandra - cursed with the gift of prophecy but ignored and mocked as mad. A stranger in a strange land, perplexed by cognitive dissonance, PoD imagines himself as a provocative hybrid of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and the Panda Cheese commercials, but as in Duane Michals’ Christ in New York (1981), he will not make a blind bit of difference. This body of work also engages with the moral implications of cognisance and perception. If we become what we focus attention on, how do we maintain agency and integrity when our reckless addiction to petrochemical privileges hastens climate chaos?
Nathan Hughes, Profiterole of Doom 2 (video still), 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.
About the Artist
Nathan is a Welsh artist/filmmaker whose eclectic background encompasses a diverse spectrum of audio-visual platforms and inclusive site-specific theatre. The British Council and Creative Europe have supported his work, which Encounters, the UK’s leading short-film festival described as ‘demonstrating a distinctive cinematic and artistic vision’.
