NATALYA HUGHES

Natalya Hughes is an Australian artist based in Melbourne. She works mainly in painting and digital media. Her work has been exhibited in numerous group shows including 2004: Australian Culture Now at the National Gallery of Victoria, Neo-Goth at the UQ Art Museum, Prime at the Queensland Art Gallery, and most recent Creative Australia and the Ballet Russes at the Victorian Arts Centre. Recent solo exhibitions include Back and Forth at Milani Gallery, Brisbane, 2008 and Little Birds at Neon Parc, Melbourne, 2006. Her work is in various private, corporate and public collections.

 

Natalya completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane in 2001. Her PhD in Visual Arts/Art Theory, undertaken at the College of Fine Art (UNSW) Sydney is currently under examination. Natalya is represented by Milani Gallery in Brisbane.

 

Artist’s Statement: My work combines what are usually considered to be opposing modes in visual culture: a seductive aesthetic and aberrant figuration. I think about these modes in terms of the ‘grotesque’. In my images, unfamiliar ‘bodies’ bulge with misplaced and enlarged limbs. They are broken by the space that surrounds them and sometimes left seeping at their openings. Such figures, however, are made up of mostly decorative forms: through the folds of garments and an excessive ornamentation.

 

Their starting points are the works of existing art historical traditions, mainly those of European Decadence and Japanese Ukiyo-e. These traditions are already associated with decorative excess and non-normative representations of the body. I attempt to make these associations more explicit. Some images are scanned and digitally abstracted, pulled apart and reconfigured into monstrous but highly ornate forms. My interest is in producing images both compelling and destabilising through this combinatory logic of form.