Sara Hughes writes:

Coomenting on her work RAM, 2004, Sara Hughes explains...

"RAM, 2004 is a painting which I developed from a recent exhibition I had called Digital Mosaics (Hocken Library, Dunedin, January 2004). In this exhibition I sought to investigate relationships between painting and the digital image. I am interested in the reoccurring way that images throughout history have been constructed through multiple pieces of information, ranging from myriads of tiny stones in mosaics through to the contemporary digital image which is made up from thousands of pixels.

The work in Digital Mosaics explored the possibilities of building paintings through multiples of tiny geometric forms such as the circle, the hexagonal and the square. These are forms closely associated with abstract painting and it was my aim to reference the history of abstraction but also to reconsider its possibilities from a contemporary perspective.

By lavishing labour and consideration on every one of the thousands upon thousands of dots that have composed Hughes' installations and paintings of recent years, Hughes sets up an ambiguous relationship between the components and their ordering structures. Like a printed image enlarged beyond its capacity to convey information, the dot becomes unhinged from its faithful service to the image and pursues its own programme, swarming and flickering.
 
    Stella Brennan, Dots per inch, Sara Hughes -    Catalogue essay 2004

It is my aim that the painting RAM, 2004 poses questions such as how do we look at paintings when we look so much at computer screens. Or to repose the question how do I look at computer screens as a painter. I feel somehow caught between the two and the work at present seems to reflect this. I work both with computer programmes and paint brushes to create the paintings making links between the handmade and the electronic.

The painting flickers between having a very precise appearance and when looking closely seeing evidence of brush strokes and the way it was made.

As a painter I am always dealing with a two dimensional surface and I am interested in the way that this surface can create sensations of space and the illusion. I employ optical effects available to me through contemporary technology to investigate aspects of perception and ways of seeing.

Both mass-produced and individually crafted, combining the machine generated and the handmade, she produces works that both feed in and out of digital culture - simultaneously embracing and rejecting its forms.

   Pennie Hunt, Tiles and Tessellations, Sara Hughes -   Catalogue essay 2004

RAM, Random Access Memory is the title of the work and references the way information is stored and accessed on the computers we use everyday.

Aspects of pattern have had an ongoing interest for me in my work. I am intrigued with the way pattern and code is of key importance to digital transmission and how they surround us constantly. This painting is perhaps like a little section of this transmission made visible.

2004