Sara Hughes - For Kultur

Both images: For Kultur - Sara Hughes, 2010, Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery, Photography David Frost The last time I featured work by Auckland artist Sara Hughes, was when she embellished Christchurch Art Gallery with her sensational coloured stripes....and you can see that work by clicking on Sara's name in the label line below this post. If nothing else, it will give you an excellent counterpoint to her current show at Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery - a warm, enticing show that is proving to be a winner with visitors to the gallery.

Three images above: For Kultur - Sara Hughes, 2010, Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery, Photography David Frost For Kultur is colourful installation and Hughes's first exhibition in New Zealand since returning from her pretigious art residency in Berlin. The work is Hughes's unexpected response to the wealth of objects held by the Hawke's Bay Cultural Trust and it brings a fresh perspective to the positions museums play in preserving the stories of our communities, histories and cultures.

Bottom image above: For Kultur - Sara Hughes (Detail), 2010, Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery, Photography David Frost.

Top image above: For Kultur - Sara Hughes, 2010, Hawke's Bay Cultural trust/Ruawharo Ta-u-Rangi, Pincushion, R165/18d, Photography David Frost. With over 100,000 individual items collected over 150 years, the Hawke's Bay Cultural Trust's collections offered the ideal place for Hughes to explore these ideas. Over the past six months she has been working closely with the the Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery team, discovering and uncovering different items within the collection. This research sparked an interest in how diverse objects can come together to create new meanings.

Applying these ideas to her practice as a visual artist, Hughes embarked on creating a collection of her own, exploring the different voices and associations that develop between her new objects and those held by the collections of the Hawke's Bay Cultural Trust.

The end result is a charming assembly of familiar objects that (literally) throw new light onto the subject of collecting. Unlike many installation shows that often strike terror into the hearts of the 'artistically uninitiated', For Kultur, is an inviting display that is drawing in enthusiastic audiences. It is the final major exhibition at Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery in the lead-up to the gallery's closure for re-development during 2010. A separate artwork by Hughes will become a significant feature of the new Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery wing when it re-opens. For Kultur runs until June 27. All images supplied by Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery. www.hbmag.co.nz