Prison Rainbow

Location

Country: Thailand
City: Bangkok
Place: British Embassy

Calling himself a ‘surrealist sympathiser’, Patrick Hughes once declared that ‘reality is stranger than you think’. He is known today for his reverspective paintings where he represents the furthest point of the perspective view, in the space depicted, as the closest, creating an illusory experience for his viewers of being within the space. In the 1970s however, while living and working in London he was known for his rainbow paintings, postcards and prints such as Prison Rainbow, with thousands of editions of his rainbow-based works coming into circulation. While many saw the rainbows as either resonating with the interest in psychedelics during that decade or being cheerful art works, Hughes has spoken of them as visual puns or acts of subversion where he sought to turn the feeling of an experience into a solid thing. In this print the bright colours of the rainbow shift into dull monochrome shades as they enter the barred window of the prison – a graphic depiction of joy and lightness on the outside turning into a more sombre experience on the inside.

Patrick Hughes was born in Birmingham and studied art at Leeds Day Training College. His first solo show in London was held at the Portal Gallery, the week after he finished his course in 1961 and since then his work has been shown in over 150 solo exhibitions in the UK, Europe and the US including in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and New York, and In Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. His work is in collections in key public museums internationally including at the Tate, The Whitworth, Manchester; The V&A, London; The Arts Council; Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery; The Nasher Museum, Duke University, US; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, US; and The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark among others.

Places

Subjects

rainbow, prison

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), screenprint

Artist

Patrick Hughes (1939 - )

Title

Prison Rainbow

Edition

Number 27 in an edition of 75

Date

1976

Medium

screenprint on paper

Dimensions

height: 106.7 cm; width: 83.7 cm; depth: 4.0. cm

Acquisition

Transferred from the Human Tissue Authority, June 2021

Inscription

recto: inscribed by the artist '27/75 Prison Rainbow' Patrick Hughes 76', bottom left to right

GAC number

19014