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
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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.
