Working across painting, sculpture, textiles and installation, Natalya Hughes’ work explores the decorative arts and ornamental traditions and their associations with the feminine, the body and excess. Recently she has borrowed from modernist painters to comment, and often critique, their representation and treatment of women.

For this body of work, Hughes looks to Russian born, French artist and designer, Erté (Romaine de Tirtoff, 1892 – 1990) whose work is emblematic of the Art Deco style, for a celebration of girlhood and femininity and a playful reimagining of his work. Hughes was inspired by Erte’s illustrations in Lytton Strachey’s Ermyntrude and Esmeralda (written in 1913 and published in 1969), a book gifted to her as a child. The story follows two teenage girls, the titular Ermyntrude and Esmeralda, who have pledged to find out all they can about love and sex.

Re-imagining these scenes, Hughes is drawn to the way in which Erté uses dress and couture to extend and abstract the female figure. Hughes’ paintings depict the dresses full of frills, pleats and bows, operating as stand in portraits of Ermyntrude and Esmeralda to free them from recognisable bodies.