A Corner of Home Hannah Hughes
A CORNER OF HOME
HANNAH HUGHES
Published 13 May, 2020
In the days that have passed and the days that are to come, we'll all be spending more time indoors. A Corner of Home collects photographic studies and new works made by artists in their immediate environments; small snapshots of the impulse to create.
Edited by Trine Stephensen and Joanna Cresswell
1. Where are you living at the moment and how has that environment shaped you creatively? Can you tell us about a favourite detail of this place and why?
I am living in South-East London, with my husband Simon and dog, Martha. We have carved out our own corners to inhabit and work. Up until lockdown, I would make almost all of my work in my studio, which is nearby in Peckham - at home I’ve had to quickly invent new routines in order to get myself ready to focus and avoid distractions. This time has taught me to be grateful for so many things that I had previously taken for granted, such as trying not to waste anything, and among these is overlooked domestic spaces that I had always raced past on the way to somewhere else. For example, a chair in the bedroom that was always just a dumping ground for clothes has become my favourite spot in the house where I can read and research; and a long-neglected dark and dusty spare room has now become my temporary studio.
2. How have you looked at the materials of home differently in the past weeks? Are there parts of it that have revealed themselves to you in new ways?
Overlooked corners and in-between spaces form the basis of all my work, re-configuring transitory fragments of photographic imagery into new tactile, collaged arrangements — this has extended in the home from paper to packaging, even a pair of curtains is currently being cut up as a work in progress. Like most people, ideas of touch are circulating in my mind — and I have returned to reading AND: Phenomenology of the End by writer and media theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which explores how human sensibility is being broken down by the digital transmitters of the ‘infosphere’, a condition that is essentially accelerating as we have moved almost all of our activity online. I moved much of my work back home the weekend before lockdown so that I would be able to continue one project without too much interruption — and I have been working with existing printed materials to make new collage works, while processing new ideas about surface, and what it means to fragment, re-assemble and connect. I have become absorbed with watching and exploring dance during this time (while trying to make exercise interesting at home!), thinking about how we move through and within newly limited spaces, the significance of discreet gestures, and how sculpture, photography and movement intersects. This is manifesting gradually in collaged arrangements that explore the ideas of zips, seams and elements of seriality.
3. Tell us about how you’ve been using photography lately? What are you making or putting in front of the lens?
The limits of my table have become a site to explore aspects of scale. Using the camera and shadows thrown from natural light, paper fragments become maquettes for larger sculptures or installations — using a domestic context to think about monumental structures. I’ve also been continuing a new project using sculptural forms made from paper pulp packaging and polystyrene. These are packing materials gathered from supplies delivered to us in the post— our only consumer contact with the outside. In these temporary tabletop assemblages, found paper pulp forms that have been designed to cradle, secure, shield and cocoon become autonomous objects that can be manoeuvred, manipulated and rearranged in space.
