About The Artist

C H R I S S H A W H U G H E S 34 Roselands Avenue, Eastbourne, BN22 8PP www.chris-shaw-hughes.com Instagram @chrisshawhughes My practice revolves ‘artistically’ around the engagements between older, more traditional forms of making art and other, newer mediums - primarily, but not exclusively photography - and the ways in which we are affected by the mass media’s treatment of news events especially those involving trauma. My current work explores the ‘site of trauma’. I’m interested in how some places are ‘defined’ by the events that happen within them, and whether the aura of trauma remains, either in the places, or in our representations of them. Although I have made work using a diversity of media, I have recently been exploring the use of carbon paper as a medium. This has allowed me to investigate a kind of ‘negative’ aesthetic, which seems more appropriate when working with images of a sublime, catastrophic or traumatic nature. From the New Contemporaries 2010 catalogue: “Fine, exquisite drawings, an overview of destruction and growth rendered at such a level of visual control [they] become questioned if not questionable in their endeavour. Aerial views, the descent to the bottom of the unfinished tower in Dubai worked backwards to engage with architectural language, the blueprint, the old method of rubbing Xerox paper to bring positive out of negative.” Curator of the London Art Fair, Pryle Behrman picks his ‘ones to watch’ for 2012: “Chris Shaw Hughes at Rise Art produces incredibly detailed monochrome drawings derived from photographs of landscapes that bear the scars of historic conflicts.” Selected Exhibitions 100 Photographs, 35Blumen, Krefeld, Germany (solo), 2019 Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize, Finalist, London 2019 Let's Talk About The Anthropocene, University of Brighton, 2019 Collaborators 5: The Hand of the Artist (ROAMING ROOM), London, 2018 ING Discerning Eye, Mall Gallery, London, 2018 KINO, 35Blumen, Krefeld, Germany (solo), 2015 Science Museum, London – Works on Paper Fair, 2015 Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, London, 2015 Emergency Prize (finalist), Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, 2015 Love & Marriage, Blumen35, Krefeld, Germany, 2014 Ruskin Drawing Prize, Sheffield and London, 2014 Drawing: From Here to There, Colorado and Swansea, 2014 Possession, Bangkok and Coventry, 2013 RA Summer Exhibition, London, 2013, 2016 Est. 1690, Division of Labour, Worcester and Malvern, 2013 Mostyn Open, Llandudno, 2013 Salon Art Prize, London, 2013 The Future Can Wait, London, 2012 Cork Street Gallery, London – ArtErotica, 2012 London Art Fair with RiseArt, 2012 Brighton Festival Fringe - Poker Night, 2011 London Art Fair with ROOM, 2011 ICA, London – Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2010 - 2011 A Foundation, Liverpool – Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2010 ROOM, London – Collaborators 2, 2010 BLANK, Portslade – Point BLANK, 2010 Worthing Museum & Art Gallery – Adur Art Collective, 2010 St Paul’s Church, Brighton – Congregation, 2010 The Artworks Gallery, Newcastle – Great Britain, 2009 Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham-by-Sea – The Living Landscape, 2009 Minerva Theatre, Chichester – English National Art Open, 2009 thirtyfive-a, Brighton – We won’t get fooled again oh yes you will oh no we won’t oh what the hell, 2007 Publications Journal of the Arts Society, Newnham College – Bodies of Work: Women in the Arts II, 2010 PLAYGROUND Issues I & 4 2009/10 Events Brighton Art Fair, 2009. Showing ‘Heat’ http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/whats-on/news/brighton-art-fair/christopher-r-hughes White Nights, Brighton – 30 Seconds of Fortune, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMFf3pVnRFI Education and Work MA with Distinction in Fine Art at University of Brighton, 2008 - 2010 BA Hons (First Class) in Critical Fine Art Practice at University of Brighton, 2005 –2008 27 years working in the Advertising industry as Art Director and Creative Director, 1978 – 2005 College of Art & Design Eastbourne studying Graphics, 1973 - 1977