Shara Hughes

Pleasure House

July - September 2017

Pleasure House, Shara Hughes’ installation, marks the first time “Summer House,” an 18th century, octagonal “folly,” has been activated since it was moved to this location from Abraham Redwood’s Portsmouth garden a hundred years ago.  It cannot be entered, but only viewed by one person at a time, and in that sense it becomes a deeply personal experience. “I kept coming back to the idea of a church and an altarpiece, of walking up to something and having a special experience with it alone,” she says. Hughes is a painter to the core, and her sculptures serve her painterly ideas somewhat in the manner of stage props.  Looking through a meandering vertical slot in a painted wooden partition, the view takes you through a forest of sculptural layers towards a vision of a paradisiacal garden.  “It’s an epic idea of pleasure,” she says, “a landscape of flowers and bright orange bushes leading you down a long floral hallway to the horizon – almost as if you’re asked to willingly walk down the isle to heaven.”   

• Dodie Kazanjian