Hugh Byrne
Hugh Byrne is a visual artist based in Cape Town. He completed an honours degree in fine art from the University of Pretoria. Whilst predominantly focusing on painting; previous exhibitions have included photography, sculpture and installation. Revisiting and recycling earlier, sometimes abandoned, painterly experiments are central to Hugh Byrne’s practice. They are the products of a constant process of creation, destruction, appropriation and rediscovery which ultimately trouble, and even collapse, the divisions between ‘painting’ and ‘object’. ‘ In his earlier works, Byrne often painted with a mapmaker’s sense of boundaries. So he stacked his colours like blocks or overlapped them as if making a collage, but he never caused them to mingle. The boundary prevailed. To a degree this method and understanding persists in his new work. Over time, though, Byrne has allowed himself to paint in a looser and messier style.