Opening: Wednesday December 10th , 6-9 p.m.
The Embassy of Ireland, Berlin is pleased to present Gods & Demons of the Forest, a solo exhibition of recent work by Jane Hughes. Hughes presents a series of black and white drawings produced through daily rituals of drawing during two artist residencies in May to June 2014 in Rud Air in Sweden and November to December 2014 in Rasi Air in Finland.
She captures with time lapse photography thousands of images of the ritual of day turning to night and night turning to day as source material for drawings. Her method involves changing the camera location daily through meandering in the forest searching for interesting locations.
Hughes’s works deal with themes of place and belonging. She is influenced by the idea of psychogeography of place, defined by Guy Debord (1955) as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals”. The artist, who was born and grew up in a mild Irish climate where one could say seasons blend into each without much change, is driven by a curiosity to experience the Nordic landscapes where seasons and light changes are strongly felt.
Through the process of drawing, and spending longer periods of time in rural Sweden and Finland leading up to the summer and winter solstice she aims at making visible these significant markers of time, the rhythms and cycles of seasons and the experience of unique dreamy ever expanding daylight hours and its opposite the acceleration of complete darkness of winter months.
