​Kez Hughes

If you thought these paintings were by Kez Hughes, you’d be a little bit right, for each image has a prior life in the individual oeuvres of other Australian artists.

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Confounding ideas of authenticity and originality, Hughes re-presents the work of fellow artists as appropriation art. But as surely as Romantic ideals are subject to scrutiny, Hughes reasserts high-cultural values through an emphasis on formal painting techniques. And her curatorial selection constitutes an oblique index of cultural capital that heightens the anxiety of the outsider spectator.

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Part homage, part pastiche, Hughes’s visual engineering effects some slight alteration and degradation of the original image, and these shifts along the signifying chain allegorise the act of meaning-making. The outlaw artist is a maker and collector who recreates her favourite pieces for her own pleasure. 

 

Dr. Peta Mayer

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Image: Kez Hughes 2023

Leda and the swan (after Heather B Swann)

oil on linen 182.5 x 66.5 cm. Finalist for the Sir John Sulman Prize 2023

Documentation: Storm Gold