Hugo Wilson
Prior to completing his MA at the City and Guilds, London in 2008, Wilson attended the prominent Charles H. Cecil Studio in Florence, Italy, and had a successful but now defunct career as a portrait artist. Wilson’s conceptual work looks at various systems of order and the human pursuit of organising and knowing chaos. Fascinated by a Victorian sense of wonder, he often borrows from the aesthetic of the era, as well as defunct, handmade crafts. Ideas of genetics and religion are exposed, often in characteristic mischief and subversion; the documentation of whimsical scientific experimentation or recording modern discovery on obsolete media, while distancing himself from cynicism of critique. In 2009, Wilson has featured in The Old Vic/Punchdrunk collaboration Tunnel 228 and the self-curated Terra Nihilus at Maddox Arts.
Modified Phrenology Head
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Sculpture
15.2cm x 30.5cm
Porcelain phrenology head
Wilson takes the archetypal version of the porcelain phrenology head, a visual aid from the now discredited scientific belief that you can derive a subject's personality from the shape of the skull, whose contours were defined by the size of localized brain development. The icon plays with ideas of physical and mental mirroring brought out by the other pieces, more so as it has been altered to localize psychotic brain functioning.
£1,500
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