Michael McHugh’s show ‘Hybridology’ opens in Sydney

Opening this weekend at Martin Browne Contemporary, the show features 15 paintings which have taken over a year to research. 

Sydney-based McHugh said his inspiration came from the environment around him. “While walking along Clovelly Beach during low tide, I photographed seaweed dumped on the beach and rocks from the storm the night before. These natural forms were quite strange: some were long and stringy, while others were torn and appeared desperate to hang onto the rock or sandy surface they had been washed up on. Although ripped from their underwater environment, they still looked quite beautiful and serene, just lying in the sand waiting for the tide to rise and to be taken back out into their watery world. All of this was perfect material for drawings and ultimately, paintings.”

From the shores of Clovelly, McHugh then travelled overseas to Europe and New York. “Visiting a vintage bookshop, I discovered a 1950s American scientific journal, Cryptogamic Botany Vol. II. Bryophytes and Pteridophytes by botanist and phycologist Gilbert M. Smith from Stanford University. This led me to read about the cellular nature of plant forms. In truth, the scholarly language at times was over my head, but the scientific sketches of microscopic studies were fascinating. I photocopied these detailed sections of plant forms and pasted them on my studio walls. What intrigued me was how through my constant drawing, the cellular structure of plants and their shapes morphed into other new, peculiar forms.

As detailed as these new shapes became, it wasn’t until he visited the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, one of the largest botanical research libraries in the world, that he could really see the scope for this imagined world of plant and sea life forms. The Library is the very same one that Thomas Jefferson worked from – Jefferson was apparently obsessed with books, archaeology and architecture. Its collection focuses mainly on botany and McHugh was drawn to the scientific cellular structures it contained. The botanical gardens were beautiful, well-kept and manicured, but it was the library, with its many books from around the globe showcasing different worlds of botany and botanical forms, that were so inspiring to McHugh.

Returning to the studio with notebooks filled with drawings and colour studies, McHugh eventually got to work painting. “My idea was a simple one.” said McHugh, “With hotter temperatures, rising sea levels and plant forms disappearing into the sea due to salt intrusion, what would this new plant form DNA look like once mixed with marine life?

As you can see, the backgrounds of the canvases changed in this collection of work as they became almost water drenched and layered with weed and underwater colours, while others screamed of saturated sunlight skies with new plant forms floating or falling through the atmosphere. Gradually, a version of the drawings of the cellular structures seen in the scientific journals and the Mertz Library in New York became incorporated into the painted works.

And so we had to ask, does this collection of new hybrids actually exist? McHugh replies “Absolutely not. These works come from my imagination, as does the name of the collection. Nothing is real, but everything could be. And perhaps it is for a moment – as the viewers’ eye travels around the canvas and they lose themselves in the world of Hybridology, where colour, form and detail come together, allowing them to experience a moment of joy.”