Hugh Hayden

Working primarily with wood, such as American black walnut, red cedar, oak and hornbeam, as well as other materials including steel, cast iron and cocoa butter, Hugh Hayden’s practice and making process is inherently and overtly natural. Hayden selects his materials, collecting rare indigenous timbers, African masks and discarded Christmas trees and trunks, and carves and treats them. He then presents them as assemblages in new relations to one another, creating fresh tensions, dialogues and speculations on materiality and the natural world. The artist anthropomorphises his materials, creating forms such as a red cedar fence, a hornbeam picnic bench and a mesquite dining table that seem to continue their process of transformation, sprouting twisting branches and wooden horns, after having been carved into recognisable objects for human use by Hayden. The artist presents objects laden with multi-layered histories, their provenance and origin seeping from their very sap and varnish. Through simultaneously flattening and unravelling a material’s past, Hayden asks viewers to examine its place within the contemporary moment and an evolving, devolving ecosystem. Written by Goldsmiths CCA