Sara Hughes' latest project Midnight Sun. Photo / Supplied
Sara Hughes is an acclaimed artist known for her dynamic installations and public works. Hughes' latest project Midnight Sun is an immersive illuminated outdoor painting that covers the glass panels of the Willow Street bus shelter and wraps around the canopy of the Tauranga Art Gallery. Opening June 21.
My dad was awarded a Commonwealth scholarship in the early 70s, to complete his PhD in mathematics in Canada. Mum studied biology so she worked at a marine science centre and, while they were there, I came along in 1971. When I turned 50 last year, Mum gave a beautiful speech, and she talked about the environment I was born into, because both my parents were very active politically. The flat they lived in often accommodated or supported US draft dodgers, and when they went on marches, to protest the war in Vietnam, I was tiny, so they'd put me in a backpack.
We returned to New Zealand when I was six months old and my parents went to Teachers' College. Dad said they didn't want to work for "the man" so when I was about five, we moved to a very remote part of the Hokianga. My parents, with other like-minded friends, bought land there, at the end of the remote Wekaweka Valley. They built their own houses and shared gardens. It was all part of that 70s thinking, that there were other options, beyond the social norms of the time.
Wekaweka Valley was a fantastic place to grow up, in spite of a very long, windy bus trip to get home. After school, I'd ride my horse up the river with my dog, or I'd head into the bush to make huts, which was a great way to be a kid. When I tell my own children that we had no television, and no power - to begin with at least - and we had composting toilets, and a party line phone, it seems so far away from their lives.
I feel lucky to have had two father figures in my life. When I was 12 my parents divorced and at 14, with my brother, my mum, her new partner and his children, we all moved to Auckland, where I started fourth form at Western Springs. It was a bit of culture shock, to be in such an urban environment. but I had a fantastic art teacher called Annie Hill. Me and three other friends, we were the art nerds, we'd hang out in the art room at lunchtime and Annie really encouraged our creativity.
Art was the focus of school for me, so art school was a natural progression and I loved being at Elam. Coming straight from school, university was exciting anyway, and back then we had lecturers like Don Binney and Dick Frizzell and Robert Ellis. The painting staff and students had their studios in a group of rundown buildings called The Wooden Mansion which leaked and had possums in the roof, but it was so exciting for a budding artist. Then Jacqueline Fahey came along with all her passion and enthusiasm. Through her, I also saw it was possible to be a woman artist with children. Thinking back, I realise she was very inspiring.
I took a long break between my undergraduate degree and my Masters which I started in 1999. It's funny that I should've travelled the world for many years, then come home to meet my husband, who is Slovenian. Gregor [Kregar] came here because he'd learnt a little Māori history, he liked windsurfing and he wanted to do his Masters somewhere far away and different.
As part of your Masters, you have do a public lecture and I went to Gregor's. He was a sculptor, with a different way of looking way of things, and I thought, this is someone I want to know more about. At first, I was like an awkward fan. I'd go into his studio to try to have a chat, and one time I left him a note saying I'd borrowed some of his cassette tapes, which meant I'd have an excuse to bring them back.
Sculpture students are more gregarious than painters, who tend to be more earnest. Maybe it's because sculptors have to work together. They have to collaborate if they're going to move a one-tonne sculpture around. This also meant there were lots of parties in the sculpture department, and I'd try to join myself in to those parties.
Like any career, it took some time to get going and I did a lot of waitressing and teaching, while also exhibiting. After a while, I started being asked to do things, or I was curated into exhibitions and offered opportunities to pitch for public works. From about 2007, I started living off my art.
Two artists in the same household can be complex, because there's always the risk of the unknown and of course, some years are better than others. But we both understand each other, and we both know that some projects pay very well, and with others, you may put in a lot of effort, but only see a small financial gain. I feel extremely lucky that we are able to support ourselves through our work, but we also work really hard.
The Sky City Convention Centre is my biggest project, both in terms of scale and time - and now it's ongoing because the work has to be remade. When the fire started, I was in town, working on a show at Gow Langsford. Someone said something about a fire at the convention centre. A photo soon appeared online, with a small plume of rising smoke, so I walked to Queen Street thinking they'd just put it out. Then people started sending pictures of a terrible blaze, with flames licking up around the art work.
The firefighters did an amazing job, and the main thing is, no one was hurt. The building can be remade, as can the artwork, but it was quite crazy, when the artwork was all installed, now 550 panels, many of them nine metres tall, have to be taken down and remade.
We'd like to have saved the artwork, but the façade engineers looked very closely, and there was internal damage. It looks fine to my eyes, but it would've been risky to leave them there. The panels are enormous too, around 2500sq metres in total, so hopefully something can be done with the old ones. Maybe they can be ground up to make a road?
When I was working on the convention centre, I had to go to Tauranga for a meeting but I didn't want to drive, because I was so tired, so I took the bus. I got in late at night and even though I've lived in lots of big cities, and I'm fairly street wise, I felt uneasy when I arrived. I later came to understand how that area had quite a lot of social issues, and that experience led me to create an artwork there. Not that I'm claiming art can solve social issues, but public art can offer people a more positive experience of an urban space. And that bus stop felt unloved and unsafe, which is partly how Midnight Sun was born.
We live in unstable times. There's war, Covid, inflation, so many things, and as an artist, I want to reflect on those issues. I want to talk about important subjects and that's why, at its essence, Midnight Sun distills that feeling of a sunset into an artwork. I want to create optimism, that sense of being bathed in light. But the work isn't garish. It has this deep warm glow, and at night time it's lit by 2200 Kelvins of light. So it's not bright white, it's more like sunset, creating a feeling of affirmative light. Because the world needs as much joy as it can get right now. That's why Midnight Sun is opening at Matariki, because it's about optimism and new beginnings.
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