Aylsa McHUGH: Figure (Oread)

2026 MAPh Photography Fair

Aylsa McHUGH
born Australia 1974
Figure (Oread) 2020
Photogravure print on archival paper
custom frame, unique to print
44.0 x 58.0 cm
Edition 1/10 + 2AP
collection of the artist
courtesy of the artist

Aylsa McHugh (1974 - )

Aylsa McHugh is an Australian artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Working primarily within the expanded field of found photography collage, and extending into printmaking, video and installation, she draws on pre-digital image culture, psychology, mythology and feminist frameworks to explore how visual fragments accumulate emotional and mnemonic charge. Underpinning this approach is an interest in the cognitive impulse to seek patterns, connections, and familiarity.

McHugh is interested in how the recontextualizing and combining of found imagery can lend itself to ambiguous interpretations. Her collage based practice draws from a wide range of influences including architecture, modernism, feminism, sculpture, film and mythology. Playing with anthropomorphism, pareidolia and apophenia McHugh examines the innate tendency of human psychology to find connections, patterns and familiarity. She appropriates images found in magazines and books to create unsettling and elegant juxtapositions, these assemblages are compelling and perverse, disjointed and harmonious, a celebration of the uncanny and strangely beautiful.

McHugh holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sculpture) from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. Recent exhibitions include; The Thread That Pulls, National Galleries of Scotland, Never Keep Both Feet on the Ground, Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne Now, the National Gallery of Victoria and Tate Lates, Tate Modern.

She has been a finalist in numerous art prizes including the Darebin Art Prize, Bundoora Homestead, The 68th Blake Prize, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, the Wyndham Art Prize, Wyndham Art Gallery and the Acquisitive Print Awards, Geelong Gallery. 

Recent awards include the Highly Commended Prize at the Sunshine Coast National Art Prize (2024), The People’s Choice Prize at the Castlemaine Art Museum's Experimental Print Prize (2024) and the Hero Apartment Building Public Art Commission from the City of Melbourne (2020).

Her work is held in a number of public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the City of Melbourne Collection and The Art Gallery of Ballarat.