'Ragpicker', Incendiary, Stroud Valley Artspace, 2019
Medium: rust dyed canvas, reflective matting, forged iron tool, hazel, reclaimed motherboards
Hughes’ work for the exhibition 'Indendiary' reimagined the 'Ragpicker', a figure associated with 19th century western cities who collected rags and bones so they could be transformed in to paper and glue. The Ragpickers of Paris sorted the city’s detritus by hand, sifting through the ‘motley vomit of enormous Paris’, as Baudelaire described it. Today’s ragpickers, concentrated in the developing world, sort through toxic materials including the innards of computers. The props presented here explore how the identity of the ragpicker could be reinvented in the west.
