Hobart Hughes [aka John Hughes] has been an active filmmaker, sculptor, painter, animator, musician and performer since the early 1980s. Hughes’s work is marked by a poetic wistfulness combining gentle humour, poetry and the song form.
From 1984 to 1988 Hughes was the co-founder [with Bruce Currie] and performer with the multimedia arts/theatre group Even Orchestra whose events incorporated music, film, puppetry and performnace art in a variety of settings.
While producing short animated films in both Super 8 and 16mm such as Germ of an Idea [1984] and Crust [1987] and the short drama Public Knowhow [1985] [nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Short Drama] Hughes also animated and directed music videos including Let’s Cook [1982], Close Again [1983], So Strong [1985] for the band Mental as Anything and for Laughing Clown’s Eternally Yours [1984]. The music video for Let’s Cook was later screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
During the 1990s Hughes produced a number of web projects including A History of Walking [1996] while also producing short films such as Dark Aisle and Because You Can [both 1992] that were screened on SBS Television.
Hughes work during the 00’s continuted to explore his interests in sculpture and installation, many works featuring video and performance components such as Epiphany, a video installation at Ivan Doherty Gallery in 2007, and Placed, at Damien Minton Gallery, 2008. Single channel film/video works such as The Wind Calls Your Name [2004] demonstrated Hughes’s ability to carry his trademark concerns into new media. In 2008 his animated short Removed was featured in the exhibition Figuring Landscapes at Tate Modern.
- Writers:
- Andrew Frost
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- moderator approved
