Eoin McHugh: Drawings

Temple Bar Gallery & Studio, Studio 6

 

untitled (pool), 2006
untitled (pool), 2006

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.

 

untitled, 2006
untitled, 2006

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