Aylsa McHugh lives and works in Naarm, Australia. In 2002 she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. She has exhibited in Naarm (Melbourne), Djubuguli/Cadi (Sydney), Boorloo (Perth), London and Japan and her work is held in private collections locally and internationally. Awarded the prize for Works on Paper in our Fifty Squared Art Prize, Aylsa’s work has also been commissioned for a recent public art project by the City of Melbourne as the recipient of the Hero Apartment Building Public Art Commission.
Aylsa’s assemblages have a distinctly sculptural tendency, built and fabricated from the experiments of a keen collector of ‘useful’ objects and images, yet they are full of curious tricks and deliberate contradictions. At first glance, they could be a simple collage, neatly excised from the pages of an old magazine and glued together with care and precision, however their digital presentation engenders an uncertainty in their production. The texture and surface of each element carry the same sense of age and deliberate application so that the absurd and architectural faces now feel as natural or contrived as the original magazine portraits of the women beneath them. Their playful uncertainty works its way through the image from the method of its creation to the time and speed of its production. These enigmatic images invite endless questions and interpretations that keep you coming back.
