Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Edinburgh
Contained Cubes
‘Contained Cubes’ comprises a series of eight artworks whose experimental making, installation and final form is driven by the following questions:
How can artworks create, contain, and sit within space?
How can the formal logic of this made space can stand for thought or activity of the mind?
How can these aims can be achieved with the minimum of means?
This work builds on Hughes’ critique of the work of Martin Creed, in particular its relationship to simplicity. ‘Contained Cubes’ is constructed from cardboard left over from the back of A4 writing pads, punched with holes for filing: an ‘everyday’ material with which Hughes has worked since 2007.
In Hughes previous work (cf. Boxes and Shelves) the ordering of the regular shape of the boxes and the hole punches was installed with reference to the particular architectural qualities of the ‘white-cube’ galleries in which the work was exhibited. This previous work thus built on Rosalind Krauss’ (1978) centrifugal reading of artworks as fragments of the ‘white cube ‘gallery space in which they are exhibited.
However, in ‘Contained Cubes‘, Hughes was concerned with developing a contrasting centripetal dynamic in which the work exists self referentially, within rather than beyond the frame.
This body of research was first exhibited at ‘Cairn’ Pittenweem, Fife in September – October 2008, and since then elements have been exhibited across exhibition spaces and contexts from museums and commercial galleries, to artist-run independent spaces. Although the eight artworks were first exhibited as a solo presentation, together and in relation to each other, Hughes was increasingly interested in testing how they retained the power to communicate their concerns within the context of group exhibitions. An exhibition was, therefore, in itself not just the outcome of the research but part of the process.
