Chris Shaw Hughes: Trauma and the Sublime

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17 April - 11 May 2024

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Shaw Hughes’ practice is heavily engaged with methods of mechanical reproduction, using both photography and carbon paper in his current practice. His highly detailed work captures moments of tension that are often overexposed in the news media, and asks us to reflect on their meaning in greater depth.

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“I’m interested in how some places are ‘defined’ by the events that happen within sites of trauma, and whether the aura of trauma remains, either in the places, or in our representations of them. Although I have made work using a diversity of media, I have recently been exploring the use of carbon paper as a medium. This has allowed me to investigate a kind of ‘negative’ aesthetic, seen in the dark serenity of my work which seems more appropriate when working with images of a sublime, catastrophic or traumatic nature.”

 

“What art can do is bear witness ... to this aporia of art and to this pain. It does not say the unsayable, but says that it cannot say it.”  Lyotard

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