Patrick Hughes

ARTWORK

painting

game / painting / perspective / space / viewpoint / vision

1999

I do two things: I make and paint walls and other surfaces in perspective, and I put them together the wrong way round. It is odd to make things in perspective – the way we see space – and then to look at them. It is an acceleration of seeing if seen from the right point, and when seen from any other point, a voyeurism of someone else's point of view, a perversion, a kind of freezing of a living relationship. Then when I put my constructed perspective together the wrong way round, it refuses to stick out in lumps and returns to seeming empty space. And when you move, it moves, albeit in exactly the wrong direction. These are happy accidents. When I first did it in 1964, I did not know it would recede. And when I first noticed it moving – in 1991 – I did not know it would. I tried to contradict perspective, but it would not be denied and preferred to give false information rather than none. This is because perspective is more than a sign; it is descriptive of how we see. (...) (P.H.)

Perspective - International Media Art and Media History Exhibition