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ArtReview - Visual Column

This research, dating from November/December 2008 until May 2009, began with an invitation by ArtReview editor Mark Rappolt to intervene in the front section of the publication.

ArtReview is a publication devoted to contemporary art discourse and is comprised of common elements such as exhibition previews, reviews, monographs on featured artists, and specialist essays. Publications like ArtReview provide virtual sites built upon representation, verbal discussion, and active distribution and they have a particular history of providing alternative spaces for artistic production.

This was the first time that an artist had been invited to intervene in ArtReview in this way, and the opportunity allowed Hughes to work over a number of issues of the publication rather than the usually singular artistic intervention. The invitation was made on the basis that Hughes’ practice-based research has often employed seriality and the use of quotidian objects such as lined A4 paper, or bus tickets, for example.

In the case of the ArtReview project, Hughes asked: ‘what agency does the visual have within an overtly textual space predicated on textual discussion and exchange?”

Visual Column took place over six issues in the ‘front section’ of ArtReview. This portion of the publication is a mixture of editorials, short articles, previews, and advertisements. The interventions within this space were photographic images of small sculptures made by Hughes. Each of these constructions was created with the sole purpose of photographing them. In contrast to other content in this section these interventions were unaccompanied by textual explanation and instead focussed upon the publication space as an ‘expanded field’ of artistic practice.

Hughes sees these interventions within publications of this sort as having the potential to inform artistic practice within conventional understanding of (artistic) spaces.