Pattern and Connect

Joshua Hede is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of media. Most recently he has been exploring abstract painting and focusing on colour theory. Joshua spends hours filling his art journals with detailed and colourful sketches. For this series he has selected some of these sketches and translated them into vibrant acrylic paintings. Joshua works primarily in an abstract style and is influenced by the world around him.  The titles of his work indicate what is on his mind, or who is on his mind, when he is painting.  Hede’s abstract works form a type of portraiture diary.

Aylsa McHugh is a collage artists interested in the psychological concept of portraiture. Her practice incorporates a variety of media and draws from a wide range of influences including architecture, modernism, feminism and film.  Most recently she has been utilising collage, appropriating images found in magazines and books to create unsettling and elegant juxtapositions.  For this series of work, McHugh transforms her collages into Photogravure, a printmaker’s technique used in the 19^th century.

McHugh is interested in how the recontextualizing and combining of found imagery can lend itself to ambiguous interpretations. The resultant assemblages inhabit an uncanny space which is further confounded by the sense of antiquity implied by the Photogravure process.  McHugh offers these technically complex works up for the viewer to seek their own emerging narrative.

Hede’s abstract paintings and McHugh’s collages drive us to see order where none really exists.  Each artist, through their art practice, examines the innate tendency of human psychology to find connections, patterns and familiarity in an otherwise chaotic and disconnected world.

Joshua Hede is a self-taught artist and has exhibited in Naarm (Melbourne). His work is held in private and public collections within Australia.

Aylsa McHugh graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. She has exhibited in Naarm (Melbourne), Djubuguli/Cadi (Sydney), Boorloo (Perth), London and Japan and her work is held in private collections locally and internationally.