CONTACT: gohughes@gmail.com
“His works are thematically dominated by visual reminders of the ubiquity of violence – in nature and in man, whose own contribution is a part of nature. Thus, not only natural disasters are shown in his paintings and performances, but also the savage side of man and human societies – from colonialism to present-day global conflicts, as well as “traditional” rites. The artist’s work reflects his deep interest in violence and its related emotional dynamics. His pictures are disturbing and troubling, and are not easy to interpret, due to his choice of imagery. Everywhere we see confusing images associated with decadence and evocative of man’s futile attempts to conquer nature. Through his depiction of things associated with violence such as severed limbs of humans and animals, and his unexpected and disturbing juxtapositions of body parts or skeletons with man-made objects such as guns or commercial signs, he creates an imagery that has often been described as “nightmarish” (John Brandenburg) or as “too much for an untrained eye” (Jennifer Shirk). For the artist, “the use of violent narratives in painting and performance… is a civil necessity if the objective is to speak against the negative effects of violence. It is an intellectual choice to override personal emotions with artistic passion.”
Dr. Stefan Eisenhofer
Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde
Munich/ Germany
2009
CONTACT: gohughes@gmail.com
ARTIST STATEMENT
Art has become a ‘forum’ through which I visually analyze the predicaments of humanity such as war, violence and tragedy. Our beliefs, occupations, destiny and how they affect our relationship with fellow human beings, continues to intrigue and inspire me to work.
Born after the Gold Coast, now Ghana received its independence from Britain, I was brought up and educated in a postcolonial environment. My experiences through boarding school, and growing up in four major cities of Ghana: Accra, Sekondi-Takoradi, Cape Coast and Kumasi have shaped the narrative of my art. The psychological effects of Ghanaian superstition, religion, feuds, tragedies, rituals, and urban iconography, all existing under a cosmopolitan umbrella have influenced me. I have come to appreciate the beauty of my own culture in addition to other cultures for the purpose of creative development.
My paintings are composed with fragments of recognizable imagery transformed by memory, imagination, and material properties into metaphoric constructions. Animal and human body parts, commercial iconography, symbols and signs are woven into my compositions. The paintings incorporate mixed-media such as acrylics, oils, enamels, latex, dimensional fabric paints in addition to found materials. The surfaces of the paintings are often built up with several layers of paint, through various evolutions of imagery till a convincing picture emerges.
My three dimensional works are often created from found objects reconfigured into hybrids often exhibited as site specific installations or as individual objects.
My performances reference through interdisciplinary media and collaborations with other artists the nature of our daily routines and obsessions. Ritual, audio-visual improvisations, music, dance, makeup, robotic/remote controlled toys and painting feature extensively in my performance work.
George ‘Afedzi’ Hughes
2009
Contact: gohughes@gmail.com
INTERVIEW EXCEPTS BY ELIZABETH JENSEN (AUGUSTANA COLLEGE 2010)
Elizabeth Jensen
On the more aesthetically philosophical topic, what are some of your own aesthetic theories as an artist?
George Afedzi Hughes
I see the creative experience as starting with an irresistible idea whose dominance goes through a mental filtration until it finds expression either as a painting, a poem, a statement or a performance. I do not see painting as the only possibility of realizing an artistic form but painting happens to be one out of several media that one can experiment with and explore ideas. Certain ideas are appropriate for performance and others are appropriate for painting. If the content and form of a work of art is not significant, then it is not worth creating it. The reason being that a work of art has to compete with other activities of daily life and therefore if art cannot challenge our perceptions then it fails to win our attention against other phenomena.
Elizabeth Jensen
What role do you think you play as an artist for your audience?
George Afedzi Hughes
My role is to create art and do it well. This includes allowing the audience to create their own meaning after my work is done.
Elizabeth Jensen
What do you believe is the primary function(s) of art, as you know it and how you go about creating it?
George Afedzi Hughes
The function of art is numerous depending on the artist, the art object, the genre, the culture and the context. Sometimes art creates beauty other times it makes a statement, which might not necessarily be beautiful, but significant. Art creates meaning that edifies the viewer. Art is also an instrument to explore human creativity without recourse to functionality.
Elizabeth Jensen
If there are more fundamental beliefs you hold for your art and art in general, how did you come to it or decide on it? Is it even definite, or is it ever changing with time and experiences? And if it is ever changing, what specific past experiences and encounters influenced you differently from what you originally conceived? Has it been through education, or individual encounters, or inner/mental/emotional obstacles (and many more reasons I could list but I’m sure you get where I’m going) that make your philosophies ever changing?
George Afedzi Hughes
My ideas about art have evolved and continue to change over the years due to my own curiosity and the willingness to learn from every experience. I have been exposed to various cultures African, European and American and I have been influenced by all these cultures. I have also read extensively on various subjects and have absorbed ideas that I find interesting.
Elizabeth Jensen
Do you think it’s important for personal things like artistic philosophies to change over time? If so, why?
George Afedzi Hughes
Yes I think it is important for artistic philosophies to change over a period of time because the individual is not a static being but one who evolves, changing as a reaction to survive within the dynamism that occurs in life.
Elizabeth Jensen
Also, how important is the process of creating a work of art in comparison to the final product? Or are they both equally important?
George Afedzi Hughes
The process is actually trapped within the configurations of the final product. Without the process the final product would not be realized as such.
Elizabeth Jensen
From an art historical perspective I ask this next question. If you could place your artwork against works from the past (whatever sort of “backdrop” you personally would choose to set it against, maybe your inspirations, etc.) and try to observe it from a primarily historical perspective, what would you say about your works?
George Afedzi Hughes
I see my work as gleaning from a wide variety of sources and media, and that it is not possible for me to call myself a painter but an artist due to the fact that I write poetry, I paint, I perform and I live.
Elizabeth Jensen
Do you think that everything that you consciously put into your works is the only thing that can be interpreted, or do you believe that after a certain amount of time has passed that there could be more subconscious messages or tendencies that are present?
George Afedzi Hughes
A work of art is more than its current interpretation and cannot be fully interpreted.
Elizabeth Jensen
If you think things can become more apparent over time that you the artist didn’t originally/consciously put in the works, would you want your works to be subjected to this sort of analysis?
George Afedzi Hughes
Yes.
Elizabeth Jensen
Or are some of these questions impossible because you can’t completely remove your self personally from the works you’ve created because you have a greater emotional, intellectual, and physical bond more than anyone else could?
George Afedzi Hughes
As soon as the work is complete it comes off as a strange configuration unfamiliar to me on a cerebral level except for the fact that I experienced its creation on a quasi-unclear state.
Elizabeth Jensen
Are some of these questions pointless because your aesthetic philosophies are completely different from the direction I was taking the questions in?
George Afedzi Hughes
You have a point. I would like to add that the work is always more than the meaning that goes with it. The meaning of the work also grows with time because meaning and usefulness are not absolute. The viewers meaning is as valid as the meaning the artist gives the work. Certain aspects of the work cannot be put to words but can only be interpreted at a visceral level. Although the artist creates the work, he or she has no control over the meaning that the viewer brings to the work.
Elizabeth Jensen
I’ve decided to focus my attention for my research on your two ‘Heritage’ works. I think it would be great for my research because they seem to embody all of the things I want to bring attention to: it’s personal to you, it comments on violence of man and nature, and has very interesting cultural ties. May I ask why a photo of your cousins?
George Afedzi Hughes
Since I have been living outside Ghana, I decided to collect photographs of Ghanaian relatives from my mother’s photo album as sources of inspiration. These family photographs reconnect my memory with nostalgic experiences of the past. In this particular case the photographs of my cousins depict a traditional rite where young girls at puberty have to dress up in traditional attire and walk the streets of the neighborhood with a younger sibling or cousin. This is a ritual of introduction of young women to the community to show that they are of age and are being initiated into adulthood as a prologue to marriage.
Elizabeth Jensen
Also, I’ve noticed P43 repeated a lot throughout your works, and I’m having a hard time as to guessing and researching what it is. Is it a DNA receptor code thing, a fighter helicopter..?
George Afedzi Hughes
The P43 appeared in a striking dream I had one night in the late 1980s. In the dream P43 was written in the sky and it had multiple meanings in the dream itself. It occurred with the word ‘publication’ and at the same time it referred to the catalog number of a book in the library. The dream was so strong I could not sleep the rest of the night. The following day I went to the local library in Sekondi, (Ghana) to look for the book, but there was no book with that catalog number. Several years later I started using ‘P43’ in my work.
Elizabeth Jensen
Also, some of the imagery in these two paintings I’m having a hard time guessing their importance, mainly because I have been contacting you frequently and I don’t want you to just tell me everything, and since we have been in touch so often I don’t want to have an educated guess and it be completely off, but at the same time, as an art history major it is very rare and exciting to be in touch with the artist we’re interested in so I still want to take advantage of this amazing academic opportunity. Maybe can you guide me through it a little? For instance, in ‘Heritage I’, is the math problem associated with “glass” just from aesthetic reasons or is there something more? And is the flying mechanism spraying something or is it light?
George Afedzi Hughes
In ‘Heritage I’ what appears to be the math equation was configured through the combination of several ideas: the arrows come from weather charts, the word ‘GLASS’ is a sticker I found, all this equals my date of birth on the right 1962 with the ‘2’ deliberately written wrong. What I am trying to say is that anything meaningful or not affects me somehow, that my age is a magnet of experiences. In general I am saying that meaning is malleable and that there are infinite possible combinations in life unforeseen, but in a painting one can make such unforeseen combinations apparent, by so doing they may seem irrational because culturally we are ‘wired’ to find meaning through rationality. In some of my paintings I am probing irrationality. The ‘flying mechanism’ symbolizes the relationship between machines, technology and violence. The machine has the power to serve and at the same time to destroy.
Elizabeth Jensen
I’m personally having a harder time with the imagery in ‘Heritage II’. What is the red and beige abstracted form up top? It reminds me of plumbing especially with what looks to be an abstracted fire hydrant to the right. Also, there seems to be an equals sign between the car and the abstracted form, can you expand your thoughts on this?
George Afedzi Hughes
‘The red and beige abstracted form’ in “Heritage II” is a distorted hipbone. The relationship between the ‘car’ and the ‘bone’ is to comment on our vulnerabilities in relation to car accidents.
Elizabeth Jensen
Regarding the actual titles to these works, I’ve gathered that ‘Heritage’ plays with the fact that you have a photo of actual family members and the entire spectrum of history of violence, not only in Ghana but everywhere. I believe it also comments on everyone’s heritage no matter sex or race because violence and destruction has been prevalent in everyone’s cultural past even if the individual hasn’t been directly influenced by it. Do you have a comment about this?
George Afedzi Hughes
I agree.
Elizabeth Jensen
And on the topic of titles, what role do you think titles have in your works? From my observations they seem almost crucial, they beautifully let the viewer get a better understanding while still leaving room for the imagination and for further research.
George Afedzi Hughes
‘Titles’ are just a knock on the door, because there are infinite possibilities when it comes to the interpretation of a work of art. I cannot fully comprehend all the ‘implications’ that the imagery I use may bring, because of the nature of my creative process, and also the fact that there is a progressive expansion of meaning developing after the work is deemed complete. This ‘progressive expansion of meaning’ is due to the fact of human growth and consciousness, which affects our interpretation of life, art and science. ‘Titles’ may or may not be helpful in elucidating the work.
Elizabeth Jensen
This is more in general, but what is your artistic process like and why? I mean the whole shabang, from planning the image to evolving it into a finished piece. Please expand on this as much as you like, I appreciate every little detail.
George Afedzi Hughes
I do not see serious differences between art and life except for the fact of ‘presentation’. If the artist can get the work to an artist audience in a gallery setting, they are better off. Ideally, I see the word ‘art’ and ‘life’ inter-changeable. I paint and create assemblages because they are a form of visual communication in which I received my academic education. I do performance art because it is very close to life, open-ended and reminiscent of tribal rituals growing up in Africa. I write poetry (poems) because it is a unique form of expression different from painting, assemblage and performance. Since your research pertains to painting I would restrict my response to painting as a discipline. Several ideas come to my mind in my painting studio. I test the significance of these ideas by delaying painting them. The predominant ideas often get painted. I also give room to ideas that come to me suddenly in the process of creation. Recently I have been dealing with the concept of violence and I have been using symbols that pertain to violence and its use in dealing with conflicts all over the world. I use all kinds of media: acrylics for under painting, oils paint predominantly throughout the latter part of the painting (collage is used sometimes depending on composition). My surfaces are layered heavily with paint with varied coats of paint distributed unevenly over the surface of the painting. My painting schedule depends on my deadlines, however for the moment I get much done at night.
Elizabeth Jensen
Phew! Thank you for taking all of my questions, I hope I’m not the only person in the world who has interrogated you this much about your works. Have a nice day; get back to me whenever you can :)
INTERVIEWS: November 18th 2008.
1.) Ned Prickett: When did your passion for art emerge?
George: My passion for art started before kindergarten. I drew on the wall of the apartment complex my parents rented with charcoal from the cooking grill. Although I drew and painted as a teenager, I never thought of pursuing art as a career. It was after high school when I realized I had hit a wall, I contemplated becoming an artist. My decision was intense.
2.) Ned Prickett: You mention on your website that you received a western style education. Does that influence separate your work in a way from other artists from Ghana who may not have had that influence?
George: Western style boarding school is not unusual in Ghana. The kind of education that an artist receives in Ghana often determines the nature of their work. So the answer is yes. Artist who receive academic education express themselves in their art differently from those who study under apprenticeship in workshops or those who receive no training at all.
3.) Ned Prickett: what are the biggest influences from your culture that you consistently find represented in your art?
George: The biggest influences from my culture are the psychological effects of superstition, family feuds, family tragedies, traditional rituals, community fraternities, urban iconography, and colonial and postcolonial histories.
4.) Ned Prickett: Finding influence in several different cultures are you struck by the differences between the cultures? Or do you find the similarities more interesting?
George: In my work I play with the juxtaposition of both the differences and similarities within various cultures.
5.) Ned Prickett: Could you talk a little bit about your families background. What did your parents do? Were either of them artists?
George: My father worked as a journalist in Accra for the Ghanaian Times from late 1950s to mid 1970s, then he worked as a Public Relations officer for the Sekondi-Takoradi City Council from late 1970s to 1994 when he passed away. My mother worked as a trader.
6.) Ned Prickett: Do you visit Ghana regularly? Do you keep in touch, talk with other artists there?
George: I go to Ghana every 4 to 5 years. Yes I keep in touch with a few friends back home.
