Natalya Hughes joins Sullivan+Strumpf

Sydney and Singapore gallery Sullivan+Strumpf announce its representation of artist Natalya Hughes.

Hughes’ practice is informed by decorative and ornamental traditions and their associations with the feminine, the body and excess. Recent bodies of work examine the relationship between Modernist painters and their anonymous women subjects.

“I was never enthralled by that thick, expressionist painting style in the same way that other people seem to be; I’ve always been a very flat, neat painter,” says the artist.

Hughes recently completed the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Open Studio, a four-month residency at the gallery that provides visitors with unique insights into how the artist works, and more specifically how they experiment, manipulate and refine materials and processes. Hughes is the second of five contemporary Australian artists to feature at Open Studio.

Gallery director Joanna Strumpf, who has been following Hughes’ work since 2005, is looking forward to working with the artist. “She is an artist of incredible integrity and intellect and we are excited for her first solo with us in September, with what we know is a very important body of work.”

Hughes completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane in 2001 and a PhD in Art Theory at the College of Fine Art (UNSW) in 2009. Her work has been exhibited at museums and institutions across Australia and further abroad. Currently residing in Brisbane, she also lectures in Fine Art and Expanded Practice at the Queensland College of Art, Brisbane.

Hughes will stage her first solo show with Sullivan+Strumpf in September 2020.

Image: Natalya Hughes, Sincere Large Scale Gesture Painting (detail), 2019-2020. Courtesy: the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.