Interview Berlin Art Link, 2010

Exhibition places:
Künstler Salon Murid Bosh, Kunsthalle M3, Berlin, 2012
Destruction-construction, TM20, Tape Modern, Berlin, 2011
Estranged Relations, 48 Stunden Neukölln, WerkStadt, Berlin, 2010
Borders, Neukoelln Import, Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin, Germany, 2010
Estranged Relations, Ptarmigan Gallery, Helsinki, Finland, 2009
Made in Berlin, German-Russian House, Kaliningrad, Russia, 2009
Made in Berlin, State Gallery of Kaliningrad, Russia, 2009
Attachments, WerkStadt, Berlin, 2009

Jane Hughes
Estranged Relations

25.06 – 27.07.2010
WerkStadt e.V.
Berlin

Jane Hughes’s photo-montages and installations investigate various places. She is interested in alternative uses of spaces and materials not confirming to traditional parameters, but rather allowing for experimentation, innovation, errors, deliberate chaos and the rejection of uniformity. Producing a perfect image is not her number one priority – instead she focuses on the process of repeated overlapping, integration and mutation, allowing for the continual possibility of discovery. Hughes interprets her environment through assemblage and reconstruction. Her installations combine photography, video and found materials to explore modes of representation and spatial dimensions.

In the installation piece Estranged Relations, the space consisted of rotting wallpaper, window frames, moss, dirt, old magazines, plastic tablecloth, interlaced with a digital photo print of a hallway (330 x 110 cm) and a still digital projection. The images and materials were all collected from a vacant Swedish villa slowly disintegrating amidst the forest on the outskirts of Helsinki. These details were camouflaged together with a large photograph depicting a view of a collapsed ceiling at the end of wooden floored hallway, with a further still image projection of the ground floor room of a domestic interior, revealing a stairwell and window, homogenizing the different media into a deceptive myriad of inscrutable skins.

close up installation view, Estranged Relations, Ptarmigan Gallery, 2009. Image credit: Antti Ahonen

Installation view, Estranged Relations, Ptarmigan Gallery, 2009. Image credit: Antti Ahonen.

Installation view, Estranged Relations, Ptarmigan Gallery, 2009. Image credit: Antti Ahonen

Installation view, Estranged Relations, WerkStadt, Berlin 2010

Installation view, Made in Berlin, State Gallery of
Kaliningrad

lost at sea, 2010, multimedia installation; aquarium, plastic, wood, old wallpaper, projector, 3 minute video loop, 40 x 60 x 30 cm

Swirl, 2010, installation: light box, photo print, perspex, 100 x 30 x 40 cm

Jane Hughes, attachments, Helsinki 3, 2010, mixed media collage, 30 x 40 cm

Jane Hughes, attachments, Helsinki 2, 2010, mixed media collage, 30 x 40 cm

Attachments, 2008-2010

Acetate print, inkjet print on photopaper, found materials: wallpaper, cardboard, wood, plastic, panel, 24 x 30 cm

Attachments is a series of monatages made with materials collected and images take from different locations; Eastern Germany, Iceland, Kaliningrad, and Helsinki. The work originated in photographic documentation of structures in Berlin which were unrenovated, derelict or otherwise under construction. There is an attraction in the imperfections of these locations: in the multitude of uneven surfaces and textures, in the cumulative effects of neglect, and in the implications of memory and nostalgia in the traces left behind. Hughes is intrigued by the potential of strategies of re-use and reinvention, and the process of completing the work in this series involved repurposing scrap wallpaper, plaster boards and other remnants discarded in the interiors of the structures as material for use in the work.