Michael McHugh | The Green House
Artist Michael McHugh’s exhibition, The Green House, expands upon his ongoing exploration of the environment as a psychological construct. Turning his gaze inward and backward, McHugh mines the formative landscapes of his childhood to produce what is arguably his most poignant body of work to date. The exhibition serves as a visual homage to the time he spent alongside his father, Andrew, within the green mesh walls of his father’s orchid house.
Known simply as "the green house," this space was a world unto itself where McHugh's father devoted himself to cultivating a stunning array of vivid orchids. Developing this body of work required McHugh to tap into the tactile, earthy labour dictated by the seasons: repotting plants, carefully reshaping delicate roots and getting his hands dirty mixing bark and soil under his father’s precise command. It was a living, breathing ecosystem complete with frogs his father introduced to naturally hunt down aphids and protect the delicate blooms. The greenhouse was a vital sanctuary for Andrew, a kind but at times melancholic figure who found absolute solace within its quiet threshold. McHugh only learned in adulthood that his father possessed a remarkably different character outside the home. As a result, the work captures not just the visual memory of the orchids, but the emotional frequency of that private universe and the quiet communion between father and son.
Drawing on periods of intensive studio inquiry, McHugh translates these deeply rooted memories into a sophisticated visual language. The Green House eschews direct representation, operating instead in the realm of speculative abstraction. Through his signature layered mark-making, McHugh generates "new DNA" and forms sourced from nature. His canvases become environments of depth and ambiguity, constantly oscillating between revelation and concealment. This visual dynamic directly mirrors the dense foliage of the greenhouse and the enigmatic nature of his father, resulting in compositions that act as a visual archaeology where past and present collapse into one another.
To extend this immersive universe, the exhibition also introduces striking three-dimensional glass forms. For years, McHugh sought a method to allow the organic shapes within his paintings to escape the confines of the canvas and step out into the physical world, much like the prized flowered orchids that were once proudly carried from the greenhouse into the family home. After a dedicated four-year journey of material experimentation which included working with bronze, ceramic and 3D printing, McHugh finally discovered his ideal medium in glass, bringing his complex, speculative forms fully into three-dimensional reality.
