Culture Watch: Will Hughes

For our podcast, How To Date Men, we caught up with Will Hughes.

A multidisciplinary artist, Will is currently showing work at MIMA - the Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art. The show is Desire Lines: Art, Place & Possibilities - it will be on view at MIMA until April.

In the conversation, we talk creating moments, exploring intimacy, and taking inspiration from Heidi Klum.

Listen to the episode

You've been selected as one of five Tees Valley Artists of the Year for 2025. How did that feel?

It was quite surreal. I think because I'd applied the year before and got through to the final stage and hadn't got it, I was much more prepared this time for a loss.

But apparently, this was my time. The other people selected are also tremendously talented in their own fields as well. There's people from a music background, theatre and embroidery as well - it's a good mix of like talent within the region.

We get really well supported - we get a living wage, we get money to develop our practice, and we get support with PR.

You're known primarily for your sculpture, but you've got a pretty broad range in terms of your creative scope. How did you discover and start to explore your creative talents?

My earliest memory as a kid is sitting at the table with gel pens and just drawing.

I was often drawing clothing - designing things. I think that was through programs like Project Runway. I was really into Grand Designs as well.

I think because we grew up in social housing, the pen became a conduit for dreaming about ways of escape.

After college, I became a nurse. But I became quite ill and came home. That helped me realise that you've just got to do what you love. My mum encouraged me to go back to college - that's when it really cemented for me that art was the right path.

Where are you drawing inspiration from at the moment?

Currently, I'm thinking a lot about the moment before you start crying.

With tears, they kind of fill that line across the bottom of your eye and then you're kind of seeing two different perspectives at the same time.

I think a lot about moments in my life or or moments in general. How do I create a moment for people to think about.

Talk a little bit about the current show that's on at MIMA. The exhibition is Desire Lines: Art, Place and Possibilities. How does your work fit into the context of this exhibition?

Yeah, myself and Claire A. Baker were both asked - Claire was last year's artist of the year. We were both asked if we'd like to be part of this exhibition as solo presentations to show how this year has influenced us and what's changed.

Within my part of the exhibition, it's very much focused on moments about breathing and intimacy.

There's one work called The Air That I'm Breathing Forever's Not Enough which is from a Lady Gaga lyric. That work is two bags that sort of breathe - one opens and the other one closes or they both open at the same time. It's about that intimacy and that moment of when you're with a loved one or a lover that you can match breathing and you become in sync and then you can become out of sync.

There's also a few pieces that are kind of more diva worship. There's a Britney Spears microphone that I've electroplated with copper plating and then that sits on top of an old office chair that I've dismantled and made into more like a stool and then covered it with a denim jacket and a denim trousers. There's layers of pop culture within everything.

How did it feel when the exhibition opened and you saw your work in that context?

As an artist, you're always looking for the mistake, or you're always looking for what could have been better or what changes to make. Which is a good way to interrogate the world around you, but often it becomes quite negative towards yourself.

You always stand on the last sort of show, and this is the biggest show I've done. More people will see the show than I've ever had to see a show before. It's really quite difficult at that point to think, is it good?

As I've slowly seen it more and taken it in more, I can see moments which I'm really happy with.

What do you hope that people feel when they come to see your work as part of the Desire Lines exhibition?

That they take the time to breathe and to take it in. Because it's modern art, it's abstract - it's not the easiest thing to live with, you don't understand it at first glance. You have to give it time.

The NSFW edition

If you want to admire some man-on-man action, our NSFW edition gives you every inch.

Sign in and check out our NSFW content - it's free!