Fiona McHugh (b. 1967) is a British artist working across drawing, printmaking, glass, gilding, textiles and paint in 2D & 3D. Her practice has grown out of a long and varied creative career, a fascination with how things are made, and an enduring interest in people: how we work together, share knowledge and continually find new ways to understand and change the world around us. 

Fiona is drawn to the human stories behind objects and systems, particularly those connected with scientific and technological advancement making close and detailed observations. Her work looks beyond the apparently seamless digital world to the people, materials, resources, vast physical infrastructures and political systems that make it possible and also shape it. 

Making is equally important. Fiona has worked with hand processes throughout her career, from couture millinery and embroidery to oil painting, intaglio print and wood engraving, gilding and glass. She is particularly interested in endangered and specialist skills and in what happens when techniques developed over centuries meet materials and ideas associated with our contemporary digital world. 

This meeting of old and new is central to her work. Glass, metals, light and other materials fundamental to technological development sit alongside painstaking hand processes and detailed drawing. The contrast allows her to explore the extraordinary ingenuity behind scientific progress while also questioning what can become hidden along the way: labour, resources, inequality and the unintended consequences of systems created to make our lives better. 

Her work is not a rejection of technological advancement. It comes from curiosity about it and from a belief in human creativity and our capacity to rethink the things we make. Increasingly, her work asks how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, might develop differently: with greater attention to the people affected by them, the resources they consume and the common good. 

Fiona is currently completing a MA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School, where her research brings together drawing, material experimentation and traditional making processes to explore the increasingly complex relationship between people, materials and our digital world.

A fitting portrait of Fiona, with the hand behind so much of her work taking centre stage. Photo by © Christabel Png www.cristabelpng.com