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Discover / Meet the Artist
Interview with Lily Hughes
"I did not grow up wanting to be an artist, but I am utterly obsessed with art. I don’t think about anything else."
Featuring
14.01.2025
Discover / Meet the Artist
Featuring
14.01.2025
Lily Hughes's art illuminates the raw intersection of personal experience and societal reflection. A profound exploration of labor, class, mental health, and identity unfolds through a multidisciplinary practice that defies convention and embraces vulnerability. Anchored in the authenticity of lived moments and relentless self-inquiry, Hughes’s work becomes a space for connection, dialogue, and a powerful reckoning with contemporary issues.
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Share your thoughts on pursuing a creative career, despite potential risks, versus more conventional career paths.
There is something about making art that forces artists to do it. I recently carried out some research into artists’ second jobs, their health and their finances. The picture that emerged was pretty bleak: everyone who responded to my survey was struggling financially despite working one or more jobs on top of their art practice, everyone was struggling with their mental health and many expressed absolute despair. But I also saw that everyone who responded was driven by something greater. It seems that people who become artists cannot help but be artists, and they are willing to sacrifice a lot in terms of quality of life to do so. I can personally attest to this; I did not grow up wanting to be an artist, but I am utterly obsessed with art. I don’t think about anything else.
Share an experience of discouragement and its impact on your creative output.
While studying for my master's, a tutor told me to put the body back into the work, that it lacked spunk. I left the meeting feeling embarrassed - not because I had exposed myself, but rather that I had failed to. This had a direct impact on how I make work. It took me quite a while to get over the comment, but once I did, my work improved dramatically. I am still trying to push myself to be truthful in my practice, to express myself and to address my own repression and dissociation. That one criticism has become a driving force in the development of my practice.
Discuss how your art comments on or reflects contemporary social, political, or environmental themes. In what ways does your artwork reflect or comment on current social, political, or environmental issues? Can you give specific examples from your works?
I think making art is inherently political. I aim to make art to reflect my daily life, so my work automatically comments on social and political themes. It’s hard to look around the world and not encounter these issues. Ever since I was a child I have been very sensitive to the often horrific stories and imagery in the news. I find that images get stuck in my head, and now as an artist, I can get them out of my mind's eye and into the world, whereas as a child I felt very powerless, having nightmares and stuff. An ongoing project of mine deals with war imagery in news media. Coming as I am from a place of utter privilege, I have never experienced war firsthand, I think that as an artist I must confront this and try to make work that exposes this position. I have also made work about violence against women and girls, again using the images from news media that stick with me when I close my eyes as a starting point.
Contemplate the role and responsibilities of an artist in society today. How do you perceive the role of an artist in today's society? What responsibilities, if any, do you believe artists have towards their communities or the broader public?
Artists are drivers of culture and I think that this comes with an implicit degree of responsibility. We are responsible for the words we say and the images and meaning we produce, as it is impossible to create work that is isolated from ourselves, our politics and our values. Art is made to be seen and it always has a performative aspect. In bringing art into the world we are making a declaration - so there is no point wasting your time making work you do not believe in.
Describe your artistic process from conception to completion. Could you walk us through the steps of your artistic process, starting from the initial idea to the finished piece? How do you develop your concepts, and what are the key stages in creating your final work?
Everything for me begins in the sketchbook. I have been engaging in an almost daily practice of writing and drawing in sketchbooks since I was around 17 - so for 13 years. Everything ends up in them: shopping lists, poems, scribbles, sketches, my anguish, my secrets, my drunken ramblings. It is a place where I can be myself, safe in the knowledge that it is my own private world, this is helped by the fact that my handwriting is awful so even if someone did try to have a nosey they wouldn’t get very far. Because of this dedication to recording my daily life, I have a fantastic resource for making art: when I am stumped for ideas I can simply flick through one of my books and find that my past self has already done the work of research, planning and fleshing out a project. If you were to sit down with the books, you would find that some projects have taken years to develop, where I have sometimes not had the skills or the emotional capacity to complete an artwork but have continued working towards it. When something is ready to leave the sketchbook and enter the public, it feels as if it does so almost of its own accord.
Share your sources of inspiration. What are your primary sources of inspiration? Do these come from personal experiences, observations, history, nature, or other artists? Can you give specific examples of how these inspirations have manifested in your work?
All of my work comes from my personal experience and observations. I am interested in history, especially social history, and issues relating to labour, health and class. Everything though is filtered through my own personal experience, and I try to make sure that this is obvious in the work. My partner is also a great source of inspiration for me, despite drawing and writing my whole life, it was only since being with him that I have become an artist. We have been married 5 years now; we share our home and our studio and have allowed each other a space to be vulnerable - through this, I have discovered myself.
In what ways do you find art to be therapeutic, either for you as the creator or for your audience?
I never set out for my work to be therapeutic but it has become crucially so. Making art has opened up so many things for me, and allowed me to confront myself. This in turn, almost accidentally, has the potential to be therapeutic for the audience. When we make artworks that expose vulnerability, there is a high chance that someone else has felt this way and that they will respond emotionally. There is the potential for people to feel less alone when they experience an art work that expresses something that they were unable to express themself.
How do you envision the evolution of your art in the coming years?
The last year has seen some major evolutions in my practice, alongside my works on paper and writing, I have produced sculpture and a short film and carried out a survey to draw other artist’s voices into the work. I’m excited (and slightly daunted!) by the potential for ongoing development over the coming years. I would like my art to continue to expand, I think it’s important not to limit the work to one particular medium or idea. My goal is to use my skills and experience to continue to produce more ambitious projects that attempt to challenge the structures that enable and disable us.
What are some upcoming projects or plans you are excited about?
I am working towards taking my show ‘The Cleaner’ on tour, having already shown two iterations of the project. This is a body of work that is really close to my heart as it is concerned with artists’ second jobs and highlights the struggle that many artists in the UK are facing. The show will evolve and change to reflect each venue, with new artworks being created each time.
Another project I’m excited about is a series of very large linocuts which are all about sex, death, depression and hope. I hope to exhibit these in an intimate gallery so that people have an opportunity to get lost in them. They are my most ambitious and detailed works to date. Aside from the scale, which is proving to be a real test of my technical ability, I am challenging myself to expose my inner world, my personal history, my fears and most importantly my desires.
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Hughes's artistic journey pushes boundaries, offering an unflinching look at themes often left unspoken. Through evolving mediums and ambitious projects, the artist's practice challenges structures provokes thought and invites audiences into intimate narratives of struggle, resilience, and hope.