Hugh Mendes

I have been painting images of newspaper clippings for about twenty years now. They came to prominence in my work following 9/11, the day of my MA graduation, when I showed a painting of Bin Laden pointing a gun at a triumphant George Bush. It had been painted about a month previously. The use of newspaper clippings provides a very flat spatial field, recalls certain trompe loile 17th century still life and can deal directly with contemporary issues such as cloning and terrorism. These are contemporary manifestations of the timeless themes of birth and death. Recently I have been working on an ongoing, and never ending, series of obituaries. Obituaries condense a life into a few column inches and a single image a scrap of newsprint that becomes a heavy token, a memento, even an icon, when rendered in paint.
The act of painting and therefore sustained concentration brings a degree of focus and depth to what otherwise would be fleeting moments in the press.
Recently I have been focussing on obituary paintings of other artists, especially remaking their self portraits for the image.

Education
2000 - 2001 MA Painting, City and Guilds of London Art School
1975 - 1978 BA Painting, Chelsea School of Art

Selected Solo Shows
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2009
An Existential Itch
Galerie Braubach5, Frankfurt
2008
An Existential Itch 2001-2008
Fishmarket Gallery, Northampton & Loading Bay Gallery, London
2007
Death from Above
Sartorial Art Gallery, London
2004 Sartorial Art, London
2004 Three Colts Gallery, London
2001 The Foundry, London

Selected Group Shows
2009 New London School
Galerie Schuster, Berlin
2008 New London School
Mark Moore Gallery,
Los Angeles
2007 Still Life, Still
T1+2 Gallery, London
2006 New London Kicks
Wooster Projects, New York
2006 'Beyong the Grave', Sartorial Art, London
2006 'Jerusalem', Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax
2005 'Fuckin' Brilliant',Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo
2005 'Art News', Raid Projects, Los Angeles
2005 Keith Talent Gallery, London
2005 'USUK',Lab Gallery, New York
2005 'Green Door',Sartorial Art, London
2004 'Forest', Rockwell Gallery, London
2004 Three Colts Gallery, London
2004 Plus One Plus Two Gallery, London
2003 'Chockafukingblocked', Jef...

2023 Mendes and the Modernists, Austin Desmond Gallery, London
2021 20 Years Ago Today (Retrospective), Truman Brewery, London
2021 Portrait of Legacy, Townsend Gallery, New York
2020 The Female Gaze, CHARLIE SMITH london, London
2018 Autorretrato, CHARLIE SMITH london, London
2016 The Death of The Artist, CHARLIE SMITH london, London
2014 Nachrufe/Obituaries, Galerie Braubach5, Frankfurt, Germany
2013 D.O.A. | The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful, GUSFORD |los angeles, Los Angeles