Natalya Hughes: Bachelor’s Pads

Overview

Last year, Natalya Hughes brought us Looking Twice, a selection of works brimming with optical elusiveness and decadent delight. The geometric patterning that characterises her practice is influenced by the art and literature of Victorian aestheticism, particularly the icon of ornamental eroticism, Aubrey Beardsley. In the past, her crisp and colourful shapes have showcased a unique kind of Japonism, updated and retooled for the 21st century.

Hughes’ latest offering at Alaska Projects, Bachelor's Pads, attests that she is still devoted to the decorative. In her earlier work, there tends to be a lot of figures and objects that have been symmetrically dissected and multiplied, as well as a graphic style that seems to imitate the soft creases of draped fabric. However, this collection errs more on the non-figurative side of things, combining paintings and custom-made interior furnishings. It is a homage to modernist abstract painting, full of flat surfaces and sharp edges, coupled with Hughes' decorative flair.

Yet, there is a lingering eroticism mixed with '70s groove that courses through this exhibition. It is almost as if the 19th-century aesthete and antihero Jean des Esseintes has donned a pair of bell bottoms and platform shoes. Hughes describes it as “the cocktail party at the museum and the sleazy afterparty at the director's partner’s inner city apartment.”

Reeking of cheap sex and urban glamour, there are two custom print mattresses slumped against the gallery wall, as if marking a hungover morning after. One of them, Dirty Deco, has a companion canvas of the same design — a pink oval fringed with blue and black spikes. There are also two works titled It’s the '70s, featuring that nostalgic colour combination of orange, blue and yellow. Almost every composition is made up of triangles within triangles, many of which are striped with thin black lines. This highlights Hughes’ intricate and geometrically precise method of building up optical richness.

Pink Hole is a perfect example of how Hughes uses perspective, and perhaps a cheeky sexual innuendo. A number of intersecting lines are painted over an almost invisible circle. However, the lines then change in colour as they enter and exit the circle’s interior. Similarly, in her work Scoops, it is as if there has been a magnifying glass painted into the surface of the canvas — thin lines are disconnected and become comparatively huge. It’s this momentary struggle to comprehend the 'system' that governs these works that makes them intriguing.

With Hughes’ energetic paintings, lush floral wallpaper and funky sleepers, it’s a bit of a party down here at Alaska Projects. Hopefully, it’s the '70s shindig you’re hankering for.