MICHAEL MCHUGH

Across more than two decades of practice, McHugh has explored the relationship between surface and depth, structure and fluidity, presence and disappearance. His paintings are characterised by luminous colour, intricate patterning and organic forms that appear to emerge, dissolve and re-form across the picture plane. These environments are not fixed or literal. They suggest landscapes remembered, dreamed or experienced through shifting states of light and atmosphere.

His latest exhibition, Two Worlds, marks an important evolution in this ongoing inquiry. Developed following a 2025 residency at Château de Cerisay in rural France, the body of work reflects the artist’s experience of moving between distinct landscapes, climates and states of perception. The château’s surrounding moat became both a physical feature and a conceptual threshold, prompting McHugh to consider ideas of reflection, transition, visibility and memory.

For the first time, McHugh extends his painterly language into sculptural glass. These hand-blown forms are not conceived as a departure from painting, but as a material continuation of its central concerns. Glass allows colour and light to exist within the object itself, shifting as the viewer moves around it and as conditions within the surrounding space change. Through transparency, reflection and refraction, the sculptures give physical form to ideas that have long underpinned McHugh’s paintings.

McHugh has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and New Zealand and has presented work at major art fairs, including Sydney Contemporary. His work is held in significant public and private collections across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, including the Macquarie University Art Collection.