Patrick Hughes

Multispectives

Exaggeration is the name of Hughes' game. His perspective is forced, his doors and walls set off towards infinity far too enthusiastically. Flat perspective drawing would be just too flat for him. The shapes Patrick uses could be put together in a different way to make stage sets, geometric caves, but he makes them the wrong way round, sticking out instead of going in. "We have mountains compared with which those are valleys", Lewis Carroll wrote.

People will tell you these multiples move. They too are exaggerating. They know they are stationery objects, but people forget this every time when they are moving past them.

Impossible objects, changing tents, art galleries, library doors, rooms with suitcases, arcades and skyscrapers, this artist has manoeuvred many different things into his system. He has kept to the discipline of the straight lines of perspective, but they have led him to many different pictures. Hughes' other main quest is for shapes and designs to lever his representations into. He sometimes makes a long narrowing vista, tending towards infinity. He uses hidden corners, and cut-in shapes like the suitcase. Double doors, flat ends with landscapes are other strategies. He sometimes uses the same shapes with different imagery, or the same imagery on different shapes.

The doors cannot really open and close to disclose and shut down delightful scenes; the rooms and galleries and corridors do not turn around and follow us round the room; there are no Brillo boxes or impossible objects or doll's houses - only empty spaces. Without exaggerating, I must say that Patrick's exaggerations are only matched by the exaggerations of his public, who tell me unbelievable things that are true.

Murray McDonald