Artist Patrick Hughes Receives Honorary Doctor of Science Degree From School of Advanced Study, University of London

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141215/720921 )

The honour recognises his work with the School of Advanced Study's Centre for the Study of the Senses (CenSes) in the Institute of Philosophy. Pioneering collaborative research between philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists includes experiments using his 'reverspective' paintings in combination with an MRI scanner to determine the parts of the human brain which process spatial clues.

Patrick Hughes has developed a lifetime theme of paradoxical perception. In 1964, his breakthrough discovery of the effects of viewing perspective in reverse led to his invention of the 'reverspective', a three-dimensional painted surface where the parts of the picture that appear farthest away are physically nearest.  

Renowned neuroscientist Professor Sir Colin Blakemore, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Senses, said: " Patrick Hughes is an intellectual explorer. Not content with his success as an artist, he has courageously trekked into the no man's land between Art and Science, creating stunning images that explore the brain's constant struggle to interpret the nature of the external world. His 'reversepective' paintings engage the viewer in a private visual dialogue - swinging and swaying with every movement of anyone who looks at them.  His work can be judged, and enjoyed, at so many levels. It raises questions just as profound about the mechanisms in our brains as it does about the nature of an artistic representation."

Professor Roger Kain CBE FBA, Dean and Chief Executive of the School of Advanced Study, said: " Patrick Hughes is a leader in his field who has developed strong relationships with academia, generously giving back his time, knowledge and experience. He has an inquisitive mind, eager to use research and knowledge from a variety of disciplines to inform his work. It is this enthusiastic, collaborative approach which makes conferring the honorary degree at the SAS graduation ceremony particularly appropriate." 

Commenting on his award Patrick Hughes said: "I have been absorbed in the science of perception and perspective since I started making art, so to be honoured by the University with a Doctor of Science degree is the culmination of fifty years of study, to be continued."

Notes for editors

The graduation ceremony took place on Friday 12 December 2014.

Patrick Hughes lives and works in London. Widely recognized as one of the major painters of contemporary British art, his works are part of many public collections including: the British Library; the Tate Gallery, London; the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; the Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Denver Art Museum. Hughes has exhibited in London and throughout Europe, Asia, America and Canada.

In 2014, his solo exhibitions have included Moving Space at Panorama Mesdag Museum, The Hague; Studiolospective, Flowers Gallery, New York; Gallery 360, Northeastern University, Boston; and Reading Paradox, Hanmi Gallery, Seoul. His work also features in the exhibition Visual Deception II: Into the Future which tours museums in Japan 2014-2015, via Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe. Further international shows are planned for 2015, the first of which is Hughesual Perspective, Galerie Boisserée, Cologne.

The School of Advanced Study (SAS) at the University of London is the UK's national centre for the promotion and support of research in the humanities. The School brings together 10 prestigious research institutes to offer unparalleled academic opportunities, facilities and stimulation across a wide range of subject areas for the benefit of the national and international scholarly community. The member institutes of the School are the Institutes of Advanced Legal Studies, Classical Studies, Commonwealth Studies, English Studies, Historical Research, Latin American Studies, Modern Languages Research, Musical Research, Philosophy, and the Warburg Institute. The School also hosts a cross-disciplinary centre, the Human Rights Consortium, dedicated to the facilitation, promotion and dissemination of academic and policy work on human rights.

A substantial new 240 page monograph, A New Perspective, with essays by Professor Dawn Ades, Professor Martin Kemp and Dr. Thomas Papathomas, is available from Flowers Gallery.

Flowers Gallery, 82 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8DP. Tel: +44-(0)20-7920-7777

Opening Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm or by appointment

http://www.flowersgallery.com

For further information and images please contact Hannah Hughes: [email protected] +44-(0)207-920-7777