As the aeroplane descends, those with a window seat would struggle to resist the opportunity to gaze upon a blackened landscape punctuated by speckles of light. This night time experience of Perth can amalgamate memories of touching down in London into those of Istanbul, New York or Tokyo, blurring recollections of modern cities into one dark carpet of illuminated Braille.
We could be anywhere in the world right now. On the cusp of sleep, exiting a dream or alert to the movements of vehicles pulsing through symmetrical grids, exists a universal experience of cities from above.
Sited within an everywhere metropolis, A Thousand Lights from a Hundred Skies examines this unanchored mindset through an array of visual tropes. Spanning almost 9m, Hughes-Odgers’ largest and newest painting within this new body of work encompasses multiple wood panels. An abstract interpretation of the aforementioned aerial view, its pulsating facets of colour are suggestive of a creeping dawn across a fragmented and frenetic terrain.
Opposite, a suite of figures are depicted in flux, transitioning through other spaces or other realms. Bypassing the easy religious binaries of heaven and hell, I speculate about symbolic Stargates, portals to pass into the unknown. I remember Martin Kippenberger’s Metro-Net, a series of subway entrances that comprised an unrealised global public transport system, certain its fantastical thinking would appeal to Kyle. Alive or dead, awake or asleep, non-denominational transcendence hovers around these works while their foil, renderings of colourful vegetation emerging from floating organic structures, serve as reverent pyres to celebrate the absent body.
Elsewhere, investigations into instances that challenge core human behaviour face off. Highlighted with Aztec hues, the series of eight works’ patternistic isometric plains operate as spatial frameworks that simultaneously trap and nurture their inhabitants. Placed within an impossible puzzle without mechanisms of extraction, they struggle to decipher dreams from reality. Instead, they sleep, gaze or ponder their fate, eyes resting on chaotic corners or symbols of hope, memory and ingenuity. It is worth noting that those familiar with Hughes-Odgers’ practice will identify a growing library of symbols and patterns that permeate much of his work. This suite of paintings sees them refined and restrained; his carefully littered clues provide possible pathways to crack the (impossible) solution.
The human condition is again interrogated in Survival Tactics, a sombre pair of paintings featuring humble bodies lumbering through the daily grind. In updating the existential thinking found in John Brack’s Collins St 5p.m. (1955), Hughes-Odgers reflects not only on the way lives are lived but the manner in which individuals choose to present themselves; the facades that hide imperfections, mask true feelings or sustain bravado.
Just as every city’s lights contribute to a global aerial tapestry, so too do their citizens serve as cogs within an interchangeable metropolis. Simultaneously bleak but optimistic, Hughes-Odgers’ assured ode to the human condition encompasses the restless anxieties that consume our contemporary headspace.
Katie Lenanton
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