Known for his plasticine paintings, British contemporary artist Henry Hudson creates a variety of physical and digital artworks that explore aspects of British art and comment on contemporary societal hysteria.
Read MoreBorn to a creative family in Bath, Hudson's father is a British sculptor and his mother an American chef. Raised in Yorkshire, Hudson's professional interest in art emerged in his mid-teens. In 2001, Hudson took a foundation course at the Chelsea College of Art, before graduating from Central Saint Martins, London with a BA Honours in 2005.
Initially inspired by the School of London artists such as David Hockney, Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, and Frank Auerbach, and somewhat out of financial necessity, Henry Hudson soon found himself making paintings with plasticine. Hudson once explained, 'I really wanted something that you could buy for 60 pence and try and do something with.' By manipulating this inexpensive and very British medium, the artist found he could mimic the effects of thickly applied paint seen in his British precursors. It has remained an evolving staple of Hudson's practice.
In his socially critical practice, Henry Hudson creates heightened worlds of texture, colour, and material form, working with plasticine, wax and resin reliefs, oil painting, ceramics, sculpture, and digital mediums such as iPad paintings, UV printing, 3D printing, and scanning.
From 2010, Hudson began making his seminal plasticine interpretations of William Hogarth's 1775 masterpiece 'A Rake's Progress'. Hudson's initial rendition, 'A Rake Revisited' (2010) more directly interprets Hogarth's riches to rags series. This colourful plasticine on board interpretation was exhibited at the Sir John Soane's Museum, home to the original Hogarth series.
In the later series 'The Rise and Fall of Young Sen – The Contemporary Artist's Progress' (2014), Hudson provides a 21st-century interpretation of Hogarth's tale, shedding light on excess and addiction in contemporary London.
Hudson's plasticine 'Jungle' works, dense sculptural representations of colourful, otherworldly jungle scenes, further the artist's use of the unconventional medium. Within these strange and crowded landscapes, the thickness of the plasticine gives a sense of weight to the dense vegetation and humid climate.
Contemporary pastel and neon colours, further enhanced by the incorporation of fluorescent paint, emphasise the surreal nature of untouched natural spaces, in which alien-like plants jostle for light and oxygen in the thick undergrowth. Referencing a photoshop composite of various pictures of plants, Hudson has been adamant to remind viewers that these are not real places he has seen. He explains, 'This is about me in London, trying to escape on a daily basis.'
Beyond the familiar medium of plasticine, Hudson has created a series of hand-coiled ceramic pots in collaboration with his brother Richard WM Hudson. These painted vessels bear some resemblance to carnivorous plants, akin to what is presented in the 'Jungle' paintings or sacred cups for shamanistic, ayahuasca rituals.
Since 2019, Hudson has made drawings with his iPad, including a comprehensive array of portraits of friends, fellow artists, dealers, collectors, and celebrities. Not seeking to make NFTs, Hudson prints out these digital works with a UV flatbed printer. He boasts, 'I've been able to merge the digital onto a physical object, making the portrait totally unique with no blockchain needed.'
Inspired by travelling in empty planes during the pandemic, Hudson's 'Horizon Line' paintings (2021–2022) or 'Scapes' present minimalist renditions of horizon lines in the sky. Around the gleaming cut of the horizon, a range of colours—orange, red, green, and blue—emanate in increasing or decreasing tonalities, going from light to dark or dark to light. Each Rothko-like composition is richly textured with swirling and linear patterns impressed on the thick surface.
A departure from earlier, more figurative and chaotic compositions, these paintings engage with the idea of a world that is bigger than us—beyond the horizon and the culture of the time.
Henry Hudson has been the subject of both solo exhibition and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include Scapes, Unit London, London (2022); At Some Point of Time, Galerie Isa, Mumbai (2020); Henry Hudson Jungles, Albion Barn, Oxfordshire (2018); Sun City Tanning, Sotheby's S|2 gallery, New York (2016); A Rake Revisited, Sir John Soane's Museum, London (2011); The Rake's Progress, Roach Road, Olympic Site, London (2011); Dewlap, Hiscox Collection, London (2007).
Group exhibitions include Rites of Passage, Unit London, London (2021); Inspiration – Iconic Works, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2020); The Eternity Exhibition, The Painting Rooms, London (2020); What Duchamp Taught Me, The Fine Art Society, London (2014); The British Cut, Cat Street Gallery and Fine Art Society, Hong Kong (2012); Wonderland – New Work from London, Assab One, Milan (2010); The Embassy, 20 Hoxton Square Projects, London (2009); The Beautiful and the Damned, Hiscox Art Projects, London (2006).
Hudson's website can be found here and his Instagram can be found here.
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2022