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Night and Day
“My first thought was to have the bow straight instead of rounded, and then I brought night and day together by hanging the rainbow over the illusion that is the crescent moon”
Archival inkjet print on Hahnemühle photo rag Satin 330gsm paper, with screen printed varnish, 2023 | Edition of 60| paper size: 70 x 40 cm | image size: 62 x 36 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
Peggy
“I made the original of this work in 1963 using gloss paint on hardboard when I was a young pop artist of twenty-three or twenty-four. This work comes from my childlike sentiment to make some element of poetry out of the everyday. I noticed the way people hung their washing out on clotheslines with pegs and I thought I’ll jump my peg up onto the line and make him or her into a tightrope walker. I think in the back of my mind were the little peg dolls poorer people used to make for their children. The legs of the peg were the legs of the doll, and the top of the peg was the head. Sometimes they even had a little frock. You can see them at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper, 2018 | Edition of 50 | size: 60.5 x 49.5 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
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Blooming
“We love to grow flowering plants, to watch the sunshine warm them, and to keep watering our blooms. The rainbow also flourishes in the sun and the rain.”
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm, 2021 | Edition of 30 | paper size: 54 x 46 cm | image size: 41 x 33 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
Love
“When two people are in love, it feels as if the whole rainbow of emotions can travel back and forth from one cloudy heart to the other.”
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm, 2021 | Edition of 30 | paper size: 46 x 54 cm | image size: 34 x 42 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
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Aroundbow
“Here is another, smaller version of the popular print, Roundbow“
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper, with screen printed varnish, 2021 | Edition of 25| paper size: 45 x 40 cm | image size: 30 x 30 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
Rainbows
“Years ago I made a print called Sky Full that filled the sky with rainbows going hither and thither. Rainbows re-visits this idea in a less crazy way, these rainbows are more like a shower of rain”
Archival pigment print on Somerset Enhanced Satin 330gsm paper, 2020 | Edition of 50 | paper size: 50 x 56.7 cm | image size: 33.9 x 41.6 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
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Palette
“Artists use the material paint to depict the immaterial light and shade.
This wooden palette is dangling on the rainbow it has painted, although the rainbow is escaping the sky.”
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper with screen printed varnish, 2019 | Edition of 50 | paper size: 59.4 x 49.5 cm | image size: 43.2 x 34.5 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
Please
“One cannot give a real rainbow as a gift, they come and go as they please. But it is good to imagine that a ray of hope might be given to a sad man.”
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper with screen printed varnish, 2019 | Edition of 50 | paper size: 67.8 x 49.5 cm | image size: 51.4 x 34.5 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
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Roundbow
“We usually see rainbows as an arc, part of a circle. If you see one from an aeroplane or at Victoria Falls you discover they are actually giant rings until the earth gets in the way. I have imagined a reflected rainbow making a perfect hoop with an imperfect lifebelt to save you”.
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper, with screen printed varnish, 2018 | Edition of 50 | paper size: 66.5 x 65.3 cm | image size: 49.9 x 49.9 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
Mondrainbow
“Piet Mondrian was a puritan, only allowing vertical and horizontal lines, three primaries, and black and white. My rainbow has brought an arc of many colours into his narrow world, which I have shown in the natural perspective that he rejected”.
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper, 2018 | Edition of 50 | paper size: 60.5 x 49.5 cm | image size: 43.5 x 34.5 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
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Cry Me A River
“Rainbows are not personal, they are bigger than that, they are scientific, amazing, transforming the landscape. Tears are very personal, they belong to you only, they might be caused by any one of the spectrum of emotions”.
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper, 2018 | Edition of 50 | paper size: 59 x 47 cm | image size: 41.9 x 31.7 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
Web Bow
“One way of showing that rainbows are beautiful, rare, celestial revelations, is to treat them as small six-striped things lying around in the world. In Web Bow I have imagined a rainbow upside-down, at night, long enough for a spider to make her web on it and dew drops to form”.
Archival pigment print on Somerset Satin 330gsm paper, with screen printed moon, 2018 | Edition of 50 | paper size: 47 x 59 cm | image size: 30.5 x 43.2 cm | Published by Reverspective Ltd.
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Patrick Hughes: The Newest Perspective
This comprehensive 223 page publication features many colour illustrations of artworks. The book includes essays by art historians Dawn Ades and Martin Kemp, scientist Thomas Papathomas, an interview between Patrick Hughes and critic Murray McDonald and a new essay by Patrick Hughes.
- Hardcover: 223 pages
- Published by: Reverspective Ltd, London 2023
- ISBN: 978-1-3999-6041-0
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Paradoxymoron: Foolish Wisdom in Words and Pictures
Patrick Hughes
This is the definitive study on the paradox and oxymoron, the two most important topics in philosophy and rhetoric. When language is pushed beyond metaphor into the further reaches of oxymoron, where opposites meet, or into the paradox itself – where truth lies – the results are ridiculously revealing. Hughes’ premise is that logic taken to its logical conclusion becomes absurdity and a sublime sense.
A comprehensive and unorthodox text-book of words and pictures from many periods and places, this book is a warm tribute rather than a cold rebuke to the contradiction in terms. A must-read for anyone interested in looking at things the other way round upside-down and inside-out. A unique look at the daft worlds created in sentences and pictures.
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- First published by: Reverspective Ltd, London 2011
- ISBN: 978-0-956-80610-9
If you would like to pay by cheque please make your cheque payable to Reverspective Ltd.
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Patrick Hughes: Perverspective
John Slyce
Patrick Hughes’ pictures are hard to describe, but easy to enjoy: Hughes makes moving pictures. His libraries, skyscrapers and mazes seem to turn around and follow you like the eyes in portraits. Flat on the page they don’t ‘work’, but when animated by the motion and mind of the viewer his pictures spring to life. For over fifty years, Hughes has captured the hearts and perceptual thoughts of an ever-expanding public with his art.
The first book to handle the entirety of Hughes’ production from the early 1960s to 2011: Writer and critic John Slyce gives an exhaustive and intelligent account of the artist’s formation and the implications of his paradoxical art.
- Paperback: 204 pages
- First published by: Momentum, London 1998. Revised and reprinted in 2005 and 2011
- ISBN: 948-1-906-41243-2
If you would like to pay by cheque please make your cheque payable to Reverspective Ltd.
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Patrick Hughes: Fifty Years in Show Business 1962-2011
A Bit of Artobiography
“…When I was a boy I painted a skeleton in luminous paint on the side of the Baptist Chapel in Warmingham Road, Crewe – the Chapel folk were angry, thinking it irreligious, but I was just looking for a large canvas…” recalls Hughes on his early leanings towards art. Just a few years later his official art career was to begin out of an act of rejection by the English Literature Department at college and at the suggestion of the Art Department; nothing at all to do with an act of will on Hughes’ part. A humourous and candid account of half-a-century of Hughes’ studio experiences, written by the artist and published to coincide with his retrospective at Flowers Gallery in 2011.
- Paperback: 12 pages
- First published by: Flowers Gallery, London 2011
If you would like to pay by cheque please make your cheque payable to Reverspective Ltd.
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Left to Write: Collected Writings Patrick Hughes
Patrick Hughes, Edited by Eileen Daly
Patrick Hughes’ enthusiasms are for paradoxes, oxymorons, puns: the off-beat, thought-provoking and out-of-the-way. Among the many oddballs he has written about are MC Escher, Arcimboldo, Magritte, Ivor Cutler, Slim Gaillard, NF Simpson and George Brecht. This is the first anthology of Hughes’ writings published in newspapers, journals and catalogues from the 1960s to 2008, and features revealing remarks on Hughes’ own and his friends’ work - Les Coleman, Anthony Earnshaw, Peter Daglish, Jeff Edwards, Maggi Hambling, Boyd and Evans and Jane O’Malley. Murray McDonald, ‘the critic and friend of the artist’, writes on Hughes’ own work. Interviews, obituaries, book reviews, perceptual theorizing, creative writing, artists, exhibitions, even cartoons complete this comprehensive anthology with over one-hundred-and-thirty images.
- Hardcover: 408 pages
- First published by: Flowers Gallery, London 2008
- ISBN: 978-1-906-41214-2
If you would like to pay by cheque please make your cheque payable to Reverspective Ltd.
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Exploring Space: Surrealist Bulletin No. 3
Patrick Hughes, Series Editor: Silvano Levy
“In the real world surreal things sometimes happen. There are rainbows. Wherever there is water there is the magic of the mirror. When one makes an impression of something in clay, in the right light the hollow mould will seem to stand out, appearing as a positive object. In the dark cave or tent or cupboard one can find the camera obscura at work, showing upside down moving images of the world outside. These wonderful natural phenomena of space and light play on our sense.” Hughes’ three thousand word essay documents his interest and engagement with Surrealism.
A limited edition of five hundred numbered copies, the first two hundred of which are signed by the author. Illustrated with twelve colour images.
- Paperback: 12 pages
- First published by: Kettlestone Press, UK 2011
- ISBN: 978-0-956-01531-0
If you would like to pay by cheque please make your cheque payable to Reverspective Ltd.
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More on Oxymoron
Patrick Hughes
Oxymoron is itself an oxymoron. In ancient Greek oxus means ‘sharp’ and morus means ‘dull’, thus an oxymoron is a ‘sharp dullness’, a foolish bit of wisdom. More on Oxymoron introduces the comic absurdity of everyday language and beguiles the reader with the power and wit inherent in contradiction and paradox. The reader will encounter people who are born old, are the wisest fools, keep open secrets, do things accidentally on purpose, William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Hofstadter are among the masters of contradiction and hidden truths here. Seventy pictures are included.
An anthology of nonsensical sense and sensible nonsense, a serious book about jokes, but not a solemn one. On the contrary it is dead funny.
- Hardcover: 208 pages
- First published by: Penguin Books, USA 1983 and Jonathan Cape Ltd, UK 1984
- ISBN: 978-0-224-02246-0
This book is out of print but can be purchased from amazon.co.uk or at abebooks.co.uk
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Behind the Rainbow: Patrick Hughes, Prints 1964-83
Brian Smith
Rainbows were Hughes’ major theme for a while; rainbows in a dustbin, wrapped up as a present, and leaning on the sky. There are other themes: space, light, perspective and the vicious circle. Each picture is illustrated in colour, except the black and white ones. An introductory essay by Brian Smith and pertinent remarks by the artist himself accompany the images. Journey through this book: through the door of the sticking-out room, to the other end of infinity, to a place of solid darkness and leaning suns, where the past and the future meet, when there is nothing to fear but fear itself and confetti falls like rain, where the rainbow is both grey and straight; and go Behind the Rainbow.
- Hardcover: 128 pages
- First published by: Paradox Publishing Ltd, London 1983
- ISBN: 978-0-946-80000-1
This book is out of print and now collectable but can be purchased from amazon.co.uk or at abebooks.co.uk
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Upon The Pun: Dual Meanings in Words and Pictures
Patrick Hughes & Paul Hammond
When the authors began to research Upon the Pun they were startled to discover that they were starting from scratch. From the cheapest scrapbook to the weightiest tome, confusion reigns on the subject of dual meaning. Hammond and Hughes have done two things: they have given the first ever clear and coherent definitions of wordplay, of the pun, play on words, double entendre and related forms; and, believing that pictures are a language with their own rhetoric, they have constructed a parallel model for visual puns, visual double meaning, visual double entendres and so on.
This is both a reference book and tongue in-cheek account of puns, their usages and meanings.
- Hardcover: 128 pages
- First published by: W.H. ALLEN, London 1978
- ISBN: 978-0-491-02093-0
This book is out of print but can be purchased from amazon.co.uk or at abebooks.co.uk
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Vicious Circles and Infinity: An Anthology of Paradoxes
Patrick Hughes and George Brecht
‘There is only one thing that is certain, namely that we can have nothing certain; and therefore it is not certain that we can have nothing certain,’ Samuel Butler said, expressing in that mind-boggler all the elements required to form a classical paradox. Through the ages, wise men and jesters have been intrigued by such twists and riddles which defy common sense and yet appear to be true. If, like Oscar Wilde, you can resist everything except temptation, then this book is irresistible. There is nothing like a paradox to torment and tantalize the mind, to tease the eye and tie you into knots.
This is the first ever anthology of paradoxes. A book of illogic and imagination.
- Hardcover/Paperback editions: 128 pages
- First published by: Doubleday & Company Inc, USA 1975, Jonathan Cape Ltd, UK 1976 and Penguin Books, UK 1978. Also translated and published in Japan, Holland, Germany, Spain and to be published in France in 2015
- ISBN: 978-0-491-02093-0
This book is out of print but can be purchased from amazon.co.uk or at abebooks.co.uk