Erin Hughes

My work reformats the home as a backdrop. My aim is to produce a human version of the highly saturated images of underwater scenes you can find pasted to the back of fish tanks. Self-mocking suburban repression is at play within these interiors as they act as containers for retro-suburban living made from the aspirational products of DIY superstores. I often use these materials as they are intended to be deployed in ‘real life. For example, wall emulsion on the walls, or white PVC for the replacement window frames. They signify for me, at once, an empty nostalgia for a past during which the modern could be accessed through acts such as boarding in handrails, or with strategic application of woodchip wallpaper, while at the same time signalling the homogenisation of the aspirational domestic in our current moment of culture and economy. The hand crafted parquet flooring made from fake-wood laminate complicates the deadpan nature of these materials of late capitalism in an attempt to install a little more dignity into these spaces. The aesthetic of the interiors themselves are also associated with virtual spaces, or low graphic virtual mazes akin, for example, the Windows 95 screen saver or early video games like LSD.