Kerrie Hughes: Other Series 2

Other, Series 2, explores the boundary between the cultivated world and the wild, beginning with a physical fence Kerrie erected on her land to protect newly planted trees from animals.

The paintings are set within the beech forest on Kerrie’s land at the bottom of the Remutaka, a landscape that gives her a strong sense of both belonging and apprehension. The fence becomes a metaphor for insiders and outsiders, civilisation and the “uncivilised”, and the way those beyond a boundary are perceived as “Other”.

The figures are redheads and animals, belonging to what Kerrie describes as the Otherworld. She draws on perceptions of redheads as “Other”, and associations of red with danger, warning, alarm and violence.

The forest is divided between light and shadow. One side is open, while on the other Kerrie cannot see far ahead. Crossing the boundary means entering another world, where there is no time, only the length of the shadows; there is no mind, only existence. The human order gives way to instinct, seasons and the experience of being another animal.

Kerrie’s position within this boundary is deliberately ambivalent. She wants the animals gone, but does not want them dead. Ultimately, the distinction between “us” and “them” becomes unstable: “I feel protective of them, they are my Others, I am on their side.”