Lily Hughes' exploration of war imagery through collage, drawing, and linocut...
Lily Hughes presents Total War – the culmination of two years’ experimentation and visual research.
The project is an exploration of war imagery through collage, drawing and linocut. The source photographs, taken from news media throughout the 20th century, draw attention to the ubiquity of graphic imagery in the news, and the artist’s personal response to them. War presents itself as a research interest because it is banal and endless, it goes on and on needlessly victimising ordinary people all over the world.
Having never lived through a conflict, the artist is reliant on the media to gather the primary materials. By engaging with the images directly, through cutting, glueing, drawing, carving and printing, there is an opportunity to confront this distance, leaning into the discomfort. Through removing these painful images from their contexts of specific times, places, politics and conflicts, the hope is that the concept of war and of ‘Total War’ can be seen for what it is: an industry in which profit is prioritised over the lives of civilians and the wellbeing of global society. Visitors to the exhibition can expect a clash of images: a meditation on war and disquieting view into the artist’s obsessive tendencies.
Lily Hughes is a Margate-based artist working across the disciplines of writing, printmaking and ceramics to explore daily life including the poorly, the political, the boring and the strange.
Thanet Experimental is a project aiming to provide free exhibition space in Thanet, as well as collaborate to promote art by Thanet residents and those with close ties to the area. It's hoped that this will be a testing ground – available for one-off exhibitions and shows, works-in-progress, and for the kinds of work that isn’t going to, or isn’t supposed to, make any money.
In the short term, Thanet Experimental have started a series of online/social media collaborations to build an audience for some of the more experimental work that is coming out right now. As the audience grows, it's hoped that Thanet Experimental will become a platform that can showcase all the great, weird, interesting, disquieting, thought-provoking and exciting work going on here...
* works-in-progress * enquiring, playful, exploratory work * work that isn’t going to make any money * work that isn’t supposed to make money *
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Free
Address
Thanet Experimental: 'Total War' -Lily Hughes at HOLD
HOLD Creative Spaces, Penstone House, Albert Street, Ramsgate
CT11 9HD
