I WAS NEVER LOST

Susan Hughes is the MFA recipient of the CCA Graduate Award for students graduating in 2021 from the University of Ulster's BA Fine Art and MFA courses. The Award consists of the opportunity to use CCA's Project Space and a mentoring session with CCA Director Catherine Hemelryk.

I WAS NEVER LOST

"In 2003 my friend Morna got lost in the jungle on a small volcanic island in Thailand for 3 days. I interviewed her about her experience and during the course of the interview she said "I was never lost because I could always see the sea." This accidentally poetic phrase stimulated my own exploration into the complexity of the term 'lost' and the distortional element of memory.

Morna's words sit in the windows of CCA in crisp san serif, the neutrality of the letters creating a space for the viewer to invent their own narrative. I have found brightly coloured, manufactured materials effective in their artifice as tools to explore and express sensual, often psychedelic or dangerous, experiences in nature. Sheets of cellophane hang, twist and fold in the space, their colours reminiscent of the flesh of a Lion's Mane jellyfish or the colour you might see when you close your eyes and face the sun. The installation is designed to interact with both sunlight and electrical light."

– Susan Hughes

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Susan Hughes is from Belfast. She has completed artist residencies in Ireland and Scandinavia where she has used her fiddle playing as a bartering tool to gain access to local stories. She graduated with an MFA in 2021 from the University of Ulster receiving the CCA and Platform Arts Graduate Awards and has been shortlisted for the RDS graduate award.