20th November - 9th January 2010

Allan Hughes

Allan Hughes, Nagraphobia, Gallery 2

This new audio/visual work, Nagraphobia, was developed from a series of investigations that map the process and effects of recording and dubbing dialogue in cinema and its duplicitous relationship with the image. The work takes references from Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971), Jane Fonda’s Radio Hanoi broadcasts and Jean Luc Godard’s Letter To Jane (1972) and examines the authority of the voice through a sequence of disrupted re-mediations of the material.

Additional Information

Allan Hughes is an artist based in Belfast and working out of Orchid Studios. His practice explores psychological relationships and responses to the recorded voice. In particular the voice synchronised to image and its predisposition to conditions of deceit and duplicity. Practicing primarily in video installation, Hughes' works continually renegotiate the extant hegemony within the audio/visual binary, focusing on the role of synchronization and its function as the imaginary object of our desire for a mediated homogeneity, when there is only the inevitable, heterogeneous production of meaning between image and sound. His work makes frequent reference to this heterogeneity in a range of thematic contexts and ultimately examines its impact on a wider vernacular of representation in audio/visual production.

Recent exhibitions of work have been shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art where he has just completed the Artist’s Residency Programme, Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland; UNOACTU, Dresden; Novisibirsk State Art Museum, Russia and the Context Gallery, Derry. His works have also been shown in the London Art Fair; La Sala Naranja Valencia; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast and the Beursschouwburg in Brussels amongst others. Hughes is currently in the final stages of completing his PhD in Fine Art at the University of Ulster. Further information can be found at www.allanhughes.com.