Lorraine Hughes makes a dramatic entrance!

Lorraine Hughes is a Fine Art based self trained Artist with more than thirty years experience, Specialising in Art Direction, Set and Exhibition Design for TV, Film and Theatre.

Lorraine's clients include The BBC (working alongside Directors including Stephen Polliakoff and actors including Charles Dance, Miranda Richardson and Clive Owen), Pinewood studios (music videos including artworks made with recycled materials for Ruby Turner and Fashion Designer Vivienne Westwood's muse Sara Stockbridge), The Walker Art Gallery, St Georges Hall, Liverpool Town Hall, the Everyman theatre (working alongside actors Cathy Tyson and Michael Starke and 'Cranford' screenwriter Heidi Thomas), Walk The Plank, The Bluecoat Chambers Liverpool and the National Wildflower Centre in Merseyside. Creating works with an eco conscience using images sources from gritty urban decay to decadent Civic splendour.

During the past ten years Lorraine has worked mainly with young children, exploring the natural world using re-cycled materials in Grove Street primary, School New Ferry, the Eden Project Cornwall and the National Wildflower Centre in Court Hey Park Liverpool (alongside Artist Ticky Lowe).

 This work 'Cygnus'- (A floral tribute to Sir Joseph Paxton) ( A combined homage to the painting - Swans on the lake in Birkenhead Park - British school of painting/ Williamson Art Gallery ) and the garden designer and architect of Birkenhead Park Sir 'Joseph Paxton' who to his credit had decided to create "something handsome and good out of bad materials" he meant to create a beautiful landscape man made out of a derelict and marshy wasteland, a direct historical guidance from Joseph Paxton in 1843 to the aims of the de-junk - re-junk artists exhibiting in Birkenhead Park in 2012.

 Lorraine hopes that 'Cygnus' evokes an elegant, gentle contemplation of the history and beauty of the park and the need to tale 'time out' to relax and protect our natural, rich and diverse Merseyside heritage.

Diary extracts - the making of a re-cycled Art work for the De-junk Re-junk 2012 Exhibition:

    ingredients for creating 'Cygnus' :

    * 3 small plastic bottles

    * 3 large plastic bottles

    * scraps of plastic material

    * artificial polystyrene / Rafia onions

    * broken artificial foliage

    * brown paper

    * gift wrap

    * faux leather

    * discarded resin planter

    * gold leaf

    * photocopies

    * brown cardboard

    * 1 sack of shredded office waste

    * broken decorations

    * faux jewellery

    * left over masonry paint and assorted drops of fabric paint

•     In June during an intense two week period I began thinking about my contribution to the
•     De-junk, Re-junk 2012 exhibition.
•  
•     during the first week I had acquired a large amount of diverse but beautiful objects
•     (please see ingredients list ) that at first appear to easily link together by colour and texture and form.
•  
•     During the second week I spent a day walking through the beautiful Port Sunlight village and spent time looking at classical and mythological works.
•  
•     Later that week I visited the Williamson Art Gallery and walked to the boat house in Birkenhead Park and simply pondered on the tranquility and beauty of the scene and wondered about the history of
•     it's design and creation.
•  
•     I returned home and researched all that I had enjoyed and seen and realised that the garden designer and architect Joseph Paxton had provided me with the answer to 'create something handsome out of bad materials' a statement that he had made in 1843 directly created a connection to myself using re-cycled materials in 2012.
•  
•     I remembered a painting entitled Swans on the lake in Birkenhead Park - British school of painting (The Williamson Art Gallery - Birkenhead ), the sensuous 'Leda and the Swan' 1898 by Maurice Ferrary at (The Lady Lever Art Gallery - Port Sunlight),
•  
•     A painting of Anna Pavlova by Irish painter John Lavery 1911 'The Dying Swan' exhibited in 2011 at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool.
•  
•     I had also been reminded of the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Anderson 'The Ugly Duckling' 1843 whose so called ugly duckling saw his true beauty as a swan in the lake, it seemed to me an amazing to find a link between this iconic symbol of transition to the year the park and its own Swan lake began it's transformation also 1843, a journey from derelict poor land to outstanding, inspiring
•     World class beauty.
•  
•     I looked at the raw found materials that I had collected at all the places that I had visited during this two weeks and saw that the gift wrapping paper I had kept for its foliage images also contained images
•     of swans.
•  
•     I looked up the Latin for swan and it was 'Cygnus', I thought about the grandeur of the scale and work of Joseph Paxton and immediately knew how the piece would finally look.
•  
•     The process of decay happens very quickly in life if we allow it. I have been working with found materials since the late 1970's (often guided by Artist/ Poet and friend Adrian Henri, studying the work of
•     Kurt Schwitters ), it has always seemed to me to be the ideal medium to directly consider the beauty, function and protection of our environment.
•  
•     It felt appropriate that I was making something new that was once broken as part of an exhibition in the new Birkenhead visitors centre, It felt like an appropriate tribute and acknowledgment of an amazing park and a visionary man.