Des Hughes Installation view (photo Clare Woods)
For all the romantic bravado of pulling an inspired all-nighter, I suspect most artists have a more conventional routine alongside a more balanced view of their wider responsibilities than one associates with the denizens of the Cedar Tavern. That seems to be the case with Des Hughes, who shares a studio with his partner of 25 years, painter Clare Woods, and a home with their two children. The couple have a surprisingly comprehensive and most enjoyable double-display ‘The Sleepers’ in Chichester at the moment, which shows their work together and in relation to their choices from Pallant House’s collection. As you can see there (to 5 June), Hughes works by day on all manner of adventurous sculptural forms. Yet he also has a conveniently small-scale and unmessy ‘evening practice’, which fills the transitional half hour on return from the studio between art and domestic worlds. Hughes collects old cross-stitch ‘samplers’ which he updates through a mixture of unstitching, re-stitching, and occasional additions so that anachronistic words, often from rock lyrics, are smuggled in to counter the traditional context with wry gloom. ‘I thought I’d climbed a mountain’, for example, ‘but I was only over the hill’. Bruce Haines’ new Mayfair space, small as an art fair booth but well placed opposite Sotheby’s, is ideal for showing a dozen of these (‘XXX’, to 3 June). I like that idea of a time-specific practice, though I suspect few artists do much of their work at the favoured hour – 4.30 a.m. – at which I’m writing this…
Hughes with ‘Never Try Never Fail’, 2015 (photo Simon Martin)
Most days art Critic Paul Carey-Kent spends hours on the train, traveling between his home in Southampton and his day job in London. Could he, we asked, jot down whatever came into his head?
