I was extremely excited to hear that Leeds College of Art are holding a month-long exhibition by Patrick Hughes, a Pop Artist and inventor of the optical illusion he named 'reverspectives'. As part of the colleges 170th birthday, Patrick Hughes has been invited back to Leeds College of Art (Hughes taught at LCA between 1964-69) to show a selection of his works in an exhibition entitled 'Forwards to Backwards'.
The reason I was so excited to see the show was because I came across Hughes' work back in 2011 while studying AS Art where I was focusing on perspective. Out of all the artists I was looking at during that year, the paintings by Patrick Hughes are by far the most interesting. His work is half way between painting and sculpture where he uses reverse perspective to create illusions that fool the eye into thinking the paintings are moving. Murray McDonald (a critic of Patrick Hughes) explains the work in a couple of sentences:
'By making his art conform to a perspective design, forcing his imagery of doors and books and artworks and Venice and rooms and boxes into his simple system, and always constructing back-to-front, inside-out, he baffles the see-er. As we walk past there structures, or bob up and down, they move, we say, although actually the movement is not real but surreal, it is created in our minds'.
I managed to get to the opening of the exhibition which was awesome as I was able to meet Patrick Hughes and listen to his speech which thanked all those who had attended and summarized some of his memories at Leeds College of Art. Here are some images of a few paintings currently on show at the Vernon Street site until the 9th September. Hughes' work is amazing and is best seen 'in the flesh' because you really only understand the work as you physically dance around them; images don't give the work much justice so if you're free in Leeds make sure you don't miss out and give it a visit!
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