Deceptivenice 2018

PATRICK HUGHES born 1939, British

Deceptivenice 2018

hand-painted 3D multiple with photographic collage
57.0 x 154.0 x 30.0 cm (image); 75.5 x 172.0 cm (framed)
signed, dated and titled verso: Deceptivenice 2/5/ Patrick Hughes/ 2018/ 9 Jan 2018

edition: 2/5

Provenance:
Bel-Air Fine Art, Paris, c2018
Private collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED IN SYDNEY

Estimate: $35000 - 45000

When the principles of perspective are reversed and solidified into sculpted paintings something extraordinary happens; the mind is deceived into believing the
impossible, that a static painting can move of its own accord.¹

British artist Patrick Hughes is best known for his invention of a pictorial device he calls ‘reverspective’; whereby ‘objects that appear closest to the viewer are in fact the furthest away.’² His three-dimensional ‘sculpture-paintings’ cleverly subvert the principles of Western perspective to create illusions of movement, projection and recession. 

Born in Birmingham in 1939, Hughes studied fine art at James Graham Day College in Leeds, before teaching at Leeds College of Art in the late 1960s. He held his inaugural solo exhibition in 1961 and created his first work of reverspective in 1964 with Sticking-out Room, a life-size installation for the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.³ Hughes’ works are held in the collections of the Tate and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.⁴ 

Hughes’ art bears the influence of Surrealism, Pop and Op Art in its visual trickery and ready appropriation of art-historical imagery. His subjects are often drawn from the archives of art history, playfully evoking the works of Andy Warhol (Warholed 2020), Banksy (Robbing Banks 2019) or Salvador Dali and René Magritte (We Are All Surrealists Now 2019).  

The present work, Deceptivenice 2018, is part of a series of Venetian cityscapes inspired by the 18th-century painter Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. Created in an edition of 5, Deceptivenice disrupts conventional distinctions between printmaking, painting and sculpture with its combination of photo-collage and oil painting on a three-dimensional, plywood support. Here, Hughes makes a playful and potent allusion to the mirage-like qualities of Venice; a city seemingly built on water.

Footnotes:

1. Patrick Hughes, quoted in ‘Reverspective’, Patrick Hughes, accessed May 2025: https://www.patrickhughes.co.uk/ 
2. ‘Patrick Hughes,’ Artnet, accessed May 2025: https://www.artnet.com/artists/patrick-hughes/
3. ‘Reverspective’, Patrick Hughes, op. cit.
4. ‘Patrick Hughes,’ Artnet, op. cit.

Catherine Baxendale

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