Temple Bar Gallery & Studio, Studio 6

 

Eoin McHugh is interested in the psychology of imagery, in the processing involved in the creation and reception of pictures. In order to look upon images as thought, he uses a number of alternative representational forms as models for my work – drawing as storytelling; drawing as didactic means; drawing as painting or sculptural study; drawings as metaphorical thought or rhetoric; drawing as theoretical analysis.

 

Each image is formed as an idea over a lengthy period. It is consciously developed and allowed to gestate on the verge of consciousness until a clear point of ambiguity has been reached. At this moment a balanced tension has come about between the mental picture of the idea, the process of its creation (the accommodation of thoughts, stories, memories etc.) and its possible meaning. A number of drawings are then made to process this conflict.

The resulting works – which depict scenes, stories, objects and experiments – can be read in terms of metaphor, allegory or any number of rhetorical devices. I am primarily interested in the interpretation of ambivalence and ambiguity in these pieces: in the space between the image, the object and the idea