Biography
| EDUCATION | ||
| 2000-2001 | MA Fine Art | City and Guilds of London Art School, London |
| 1975-1978 | BA (Hons) Fine Art | Chelsea School of Art, London |
| ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS | ||
| 2024 | Rest in Paint | Century Club, London |
| 2022 | Mendes and his Mentors | The Tub, London |
| 2021 | A Retrospective: It was 20 years ago today… | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2020 | Autorretrato: 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 | BRAUBACHfive, Frankfurt |
| 2014 | Obituaries & Other Works | High House Gallery, Oxford |
| 2013 | D.OA. the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful | Gusford, Los Angeles |
| 2012 | Obituaries | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2011 | 9/10/11 | KENNY SCHACHTER / ROVE, London |
| 2009 | An Existential Itch 2001-2008 | BRAUBACHfive, Frankfurt |
| 2009 | An Existential Itch 2001-2008 | Loading Bay Gallery, London |
| 2008 | An Existential Itch 2001-2008 | Fishmarket Gallery, Northampton |
| 2007 | Death from Above | Sartorial Contemporary Art, London |
| SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS | ||
| 2023 | Mendes and the Modernists | Austin Desmond Gallery, London |
| 2023 | Mendes & Co. Deceased | James Freeman Gallery, London |
| 2023 | The Subversive Landscape | Tremenheere Gallery, Penzance |
| 2022 | Summer Exhibition | Royal Academy of Arts, London |
| 2022 | Hugh Mendes and Thomas Doran | School Gallery, London |
| 2019 | 10 Years | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2019 | Summer Exhibition | Royal Academy, London |
| 2019 | Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Award | Piano Nobile Gallery, London |
| 2019 | The Rules of Freedom | Colyer Bristow Gallery, London |
| 2017 | In Memoriam Francesca Lowe | Old Truman Brewery, London |
| 2017 | Remains (two-person collaboration with Alistair Gordon) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2017 | Part I: Street Semiotics (curated by Zavier Ellis) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2015 | Black Paintings (curated by Zavier Ellis) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2015 | Doppelganger | No Format Gallery, London |
| 2014 | The Great War | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2013 | War | Jacob’s Island, London |
| 2013 | Six Degrees of Separation | Wimbledon Art Space, London |
| 2012 | The End | Jacob’s Island, London |
| 2012 | The Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis, Simon Rumley & Rebecca Wilson) | B1, Victoria House, London |
| 2012 | The Serpent’s Tail | Witzenhausen Gallery, Amsterdam |
| 2012 | Polemically Small (curated by Zavier Ellis & Edward Lucie-Smith) | Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham |
| 2012 | The Id, the Ego and the Superego (curated by Zavier Ellis & Marcela Munteanu) | BRAUBACHfive, Frankfurt |
| 2011 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT presents: Polemically Small (curated by | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| Zavier Ellis, Edward Lucie-Smith, Max Presneill & Simon Rumley) | ||
| 2011 | The Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis, Simon Rumley & Rebecca Wilson) | B1, Victoria House, London |
| 2011 | Polemically Small (curated by Edward Lucie-Smith) | Klaipeda Culture Centre, Klaipeda |
| 2011 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT presents: Polemically Small (curated by Zavier Ellis, Edward Lucie-Smith, Max Presneill & Simon Rumley) | Torrance Art Museum, Torrance |
| 2011 | The Possessed (curated by John Stark) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2010 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Shoreditch Town Hall, London |
| 2010 | Press Art | Museum der Moderne, Salzburg |
| 2010 | Papyrophilia | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2009 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Old Truman Brewery, London |
| 2009 | New London School (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Gallerie Schuster, Berlin |
| 2008 | New London School (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles |
| 2007 | Still Life, Still | T1+2 Gallery, London |
| 2006 | New London Kicks | Wooster Projects, New York |
| 2005 | Fuckin’ Brilliant | Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo |
| 2005 | Art News | Raid Projects, Los Angeles |
| 2005 | Art News | Three Colts Gallery, London |
| 2005 | USUK | Lab Gallery, New York |
| 2005 | Green Door | Sartorial Art, London |
| 2004 | Forest | Rockwell Gallery, London |
| 2003 | Chockafukingblocked | Jeffery Charles Gallery, London |
| 2002 | Yesteryearnowadays | Hales Gallery, London |
| AWARDS & RESIDENCIES | ||
| 2003 | Fresh Art ‘Artist of the Year’ | |
| BIBLIOGRAPHY | ||
| 2011 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT | Exhibition Catalogue |
| 2008 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT | Exhibition Catalogue |
| 2008 | An Existential Itch, Craig Burnett | Fishmarket Publications (ISBN 978-0-9555 706) |
| COLLECTIONS | ||
| Wendy Asher, Los Angeles | ||
| Jerry Hall, London | ||
| Mauritz Huntzinger, Frankfurt | ||
| Angela Nikolakopoulou, London | ||
| Peter Nobel, Zurich | ||
| Kelsey Offield Ford, Los Angeles | ||
| Kenny Schachter, London | ||
| Steve Shane, New York | ||
| Bill Wyman, London | ||
| Wooster Projects, New York | ||
| Private collections in China, Germany, United Kingdom & United States | ||
Press Release
| Autorretrato |
| EXHIBITION DATES Friday 14 September – Saturday 13 October 2018 |
| CHARLIE SMITH LONDON is delighted to announce Hugh Mendes’ third solo exhibition with the gallery. Mendes is recognised for finely rendered obituary paintings that operate simultaneously as portrait and still life. This obsessive project, ongoing now for over ten years, evolved originally from making still life paintings of newspaper cuttings. Considering still life’s metaphorical function within the history of Western art from 16th century Netherlandish painting onwards, adopting the obituary as a singular subject enabled Mendes to embrace and affirm the inherent meaning of memento mori: remember death. In this series Mendes continues from his 2016 exhibition ‘The Death of the Artist’, which represented a shift from painting various notable figures whose life and work resonated with Mendes, to recently deceased artists only. Significantly, in this exhibition Mendes turns backwards to paint heroic artists from throughout the centuries, all of whom have expressly impacted upon him and his practice. And in using their own self-portraits as source material, Mendes has been able to engage profoundly with the artists’ intentions: “I used Lucian Freud’s self-portrait a few years ago, then continued to explore this theme with others, such as Francis Bacon and Michael Andrews. This gave me a fascinating new perspective, as I was engaging with their psychology and how they saw themselves. It also allowed me to engage with their idiosyncratic use of paint and perhaps consider a degree of existentialism.” Indeed, this process has facilitated a meditation on and enabled a conversation with the titans of art history: Picasso, Matisse, van Gogh, Cézanne, El Greco, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Goya all feature. During the making of each of these paintings, Mendes has engaged profoundly with the personality of the artist, investing in and befriending them. He will talk with fondness of the characteristics of every subject, as well as the challenge of integrating their techniques with his own. Each painting, therefore, is activated differently, and represents an audacious synthesis of contemporary and historical painting. |
Edward Lucie-Smith | Icons for and of the Self
| EXHIBITION DATES: Friday 14 September – Saturday 13 October 2018 |
| In this fascinating series based on the self-portraits made by a number of extremely eminent artists from the past, Hugh Mendes offers an examination of what this form of activity has meant to the Western canon. Self-portraits are not common in non-Western artistic traditions. Here in the West, on the contrary, they have played an important role in defining the meaning and purpose of art. Certain major artists, among them both Rembrandt and Van Gogh, exist within the sphere of the popular imagination through the series of images they made of themselves. In no other sphere of creative activity has the direct, unflinching examination of the self played such a major part. Autobiographical texts play the same role in classic literature, but do not occupy nearly such a central place. Music is sometimes autobiographical by implication – when it does so, usually with the aid of words. It is hard to think of examples of architecture serving as a tool for self-examination. It is therefore paradoxical that an artist should now choose to repeat, as exactly as he can, these originally self-generated likenesses. In part this belongs to a recently established tendency in the visual arts, where ‘appropriations’ – more or less exact copies of pre-existing images – are put forward as embodiments of contemporary originality. Yet in this case there is something that goes much deeper. In making these paintings, Hugh Mendes also looks to another model – that is, he offers these versions as surrogates for the photographic portraits that often accompany obituaries in newspapers. An obituary of this sort, with its accompanying image, indicates that the person so commemorated has achieved a certain degree of importance within contemporary society. That is, these are no longer simple acts of self-examination, obediently copied, but tributes to the enduring celebrity these often long-departed personalities have achieved, and to the way in which they now continue to resonate in the popular imagination after their demise. What they say is: ‘Yes, this person is still very much alive to us.’ One can also suggest a further dimension. Basically, what is offered here is a series of cultural icons. It is not going too far to say that they are the equivalents of the sacred images one might find in a church. We live in a time when this hunger for and sense of the sacred have been displaced from the purely religious settings they once seemed to occupy. Rather than celebrating rituals in church, we now very often subscribe to a more general cult of ‘the creative’. The growth of interest in self-portraiture, from the time of the Renaissance onwards, can be regarded as being part of this. Essentially, self-portraits offer not simply a likeness that external observers will recognise, but an invitation to penetrate the innermost recesses of creativity. Another paradox here: in doing so, the observer is often made aware of the huge gap that exists between the maker of the self-portrait and himself (or, as the case may be, herself). The self-portrait thus alienates at the same time as it penetrates. We can never be Rembrandt. We can never be Van Gogh. Nor would we, in all honesty, wish to be either. |