Patrick Hughes celebrates 50 years of art at Flowers gallery

ON Wednesday evening, when he had made sure his pictures of infinity were hanging the right way up, Patrick Hughes hosted a party to celebrate 50 years in the art world.

The private view at the Flowers gallery in Kingsland Road – a short distance from Mr Hughes’ Old Street studio and home where he lives with his wife, the historian Di Atkinson – was a scene of well-organised confusion. 

The actor Steven Berkoff, wearing a New Age monk’s habit, swayed from side to side in front of a “retro­perspective” three-dimensional painting of Venice. A child stomped on a clown that had been pasted to the floor. Everywhere there were double takes and murmurs of disbelief. 

Mr Hughes, holding court in a magenta and blue checked David Chambers suit, seemed pleased.

“I don’t belong to any particular school and I’m not in the in-crowd,” he said. 

“I’m interested in reaching a point that can never be reached. But the really wonderful thing is when the viewer comes along, then it comes alive.”

Mr Hughes, 71, has always been fascinated by perspective and paradoxes and what he calls “reverseness”, the idea of turning objects and landscapes inside out so that the parts nearest to the viewer are those that should be furthest away. 

“In the early works I was in a contradictory frame of mind. If a cloakroom ticket said one on it, I wrote a two in the one. 

“If the world was the right way round, I made it the wrong way round,” he said.

Over the years these experiments have taken increasingly elaborate forms. Mr Hughes now employs six artists full-time to work on his designs. 

“I’m something of a popular artist because I’ve sold a million postcards. But I’d like to think I do things that people wouldn’t do. Nobody else has painted, or would paint, infinity from the other end,” he said.

Hugo Williams, the poet, added: “The works are visual puns and plays on words, mind games. You get some clue from his suits. 

“Patrick’s a dandy and his work is dandified. It’s to do with fun more than anything else.”

Not everyone gets it though.

“I made a piece called The Perfect Present for a show in Ireland – we always make jokes about the people in Ireland – and the guy who unwrapped the show unwrapped The Perfect Present,” said Mr Hughes. “I had to do it again.”

• Patrick Hughes: Fifty Years in Show Business is at Flowers, 82 Kingsland Road, E2, until September 3.

Published: 15th July, 2011
by SIMON WROE