Jane Hughes (b.1984) is an Irish born artist living in Helsinki. After attaining her BA in Fine Art at National College of Art & Design in Dublin in 2006 she moved to Berlin. She completed her MA, in Environmental Art at Aalto University in Helsinki in 2012. She did one year of her studies at the MA, Art in Context at University of Arts (UDK) in Berlin. From 2010 to 2013 she co-curated exhibitions at the WerkStadt, Berlin and organised Art Clinic a monthly critical feedback sessions for professional artists in Berlin.
In Hughes’ art practice she works with painting, photography, drawing, animation, installation and collaborative projects. In her recent work she examines the tensions between photography and painting as records of the past. She is an image hunter, compiling image archives as a way to ground herself in a cultural understanding, to slowly seep into the nuances and layers of social histories, to dig into a social psyche.
Recent solo exhibitions include The True Believer at Laikku, Tampere in Finland (2020), Someone Else’s Stories a collaboration with Taru Kallio at Galleria Huuto, in Helsinki (2020) and Place, Histories and Other Matters at Toradh Galleries, in Kells and Ashbourne, Co. Meath, Ireland (2020), Architecture of Emotions at Custom House Studios & Gallery in Westport, Ireland (2018) and Gods & Demons of the Forest at the Embassy of Ireland, Berlin (2015). She has been awarded several residencies in Germany, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Ireland, most recently at Heinrich Böll Cottage on Achill Island (2019). Her works have been exhibited in internationally in museums, galleries, and artist-run spaces including; Figure Out curated by French duo virgule3 at Idiotopie, Nancy, France (2018);Threshold, Kunsthalle am Hamburgplatz, Berlin, Neither Here Nor There, Galway Arts Centre, Ireland(2014) & Grimmuseum, Berlin(2013); Vulpicides Sorbus Galleria, Helsinki(2013) and Made in Berlin, the State Gallery of Kallingrad, Russia(2009).
Her works are in public collections including Finnish State Art Deposit Collection, Arts Council of Ostrobothnia, Finland, National visual arts library, Dublin and private collections in Ireland, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
