Press release | September 2026
Ruup & Form presents Erin Hughes at British Art Fair 2026, Spotlight: Contemporary
British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London SW3 4RY
Stand: Gallery 8, Spotlight: Contemporary
Collectors’ Preview: Thursday 24 September 2026, 12pm to 9pm
Fair dates: 24 to 27 September 2026
Ruup & Form presents a solo presentation of new work by Erin Hughes at British Art Fair 2026. Root // Route brings together hand cut paper collages made in 2026. Hughes creates her own palette by marbling and screen-printing paper, then cuts and assembles it into landscapes of regularly travelled places around Mid Wales, where she lives and works.
The exhibition title holds the tension the series is built on. Root speaks to being settled in a place, Route to moving continually through it, and the works sit between the two: the familiarity of walking the same paths repeatedly, and the quiet fact that the path is never the same twice.
The works vary widely in scale, from large-scale pieces to works small enough to hold in two hands, and move between Hafren Forest, the River Severn, the Llawr y Glynn valley, the Dylife Pass and Cadair Idris. Across the series a route runs through the image, a road, a river, a path or an opening between trees, carrying the suggestion of moving forward and of returning.
Each fragment is cut and fitted against the next, leaving a fine dark line between them and giving the surface the appearance of inlaid stone. Seen on their own, the marbled papers are entirely abstract. Cut apart and assembled, they become trees, rock, water and cloud, while the quieter screen-printed expanses of sky and water open up the density around them.
“My technique draws on pietra dura and traditions of inlaid marble, but rather than working with stone, I create my own palette of hand marbled and screen-printed papers. There is a contradiction here that interests me: the idea of setting an image in stone, while constructing it from something far more fragile and ephemeral.”
Erin Hughes
Root // Route sits closely with Ruup & Form’s curatorial ethos, a commitment to research led practice and to the intelligence of making. The series asks how clearly we can see a landscape when our sense of it has already been shaped by pictures, and Hughes leans into that rather than resisting it, choosing views that look almost too perfect and rebuilding them from papers that imitate stone. Speaking of the landscape that shapes the series, and of living among it, Hughes reflects: “Since moving to Mid Wales, I have become very conscious of how unstable a landscape can be. Places that appear permanent are continually shifting through weather, seasons, forestry, drought, tourism and use. I return to many of the same places repeatedly, and they are never quite the same.”
On the decision to present Erin Hughes at British Art Fair Spotlight this year, Varuna Kollanethu, Director and Founder of Ruup & Form says: “Erin builds a landscape from paper she has marbled by hand, so every rock, every stand of trees, every stretch of water begins as an abstract pattern long before it becomes an image. We have watched this body of work take shape over the past year, and it felt right to bring it to the British Art Fair, where the question of what landscape can be in British art remains very much open.”
Works are available to view and acquire throughout the fair and the gallery. A full works list, prices and high-resolution images are available on request.
All sales enquiries at enquiries@ruupandform.com
For images and press related requests, please contact Martha McNaughton, martha@maycommunications.co.uk, +44 7515 169628.
ENDS //
Editors Notes
About Erin Hughes
Erin Hughes is a visual artist based in Mid Wales, with a studio in Llanidloes. She works with hand marbled paper to make collages and installations exploring landscape, illusion and craft, drawing on faux finishing and the traditions of inlaid stone. Her practice moves between intimate studio collages and large-scale site specific work and returns throughout to the point at which an observed landscape begins to look constructed.
Hughes completed an Art Foundation Diploma at Oxford Brookes University, a BA in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, and an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London. She lived and worked in Berlin, where she co-founded Cypher Space and spent several years as an assistant to the artist David Thorpe.
Her first institutional solo exhibition, Floored // Flawed, was presented at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, and she has completed a commission for Vital Arts at Newham Hospital. Her animated work has been projected at architectural scale onto Aberystwyth Castle as part of Ton Fawr, The Big Wave. She works collaboratively with musicians, designers and artists, among them the Will Barnes Quartet, for whom she produces live liquid marbling visuals during performances, and leads workshops and public commissions across Wales.
erinlaurahughes.com
About Ruup & Form
Ruup & Form is a contemporary London gallery working at the intersection of contemporary art, craft and design. Founded in 2019 by Varuna Kollanethu, the gallery presents museum quality works that engage with and reflect the current cultural climate through exhibitions, commissions and educational programming. Working with an international cohort of artists, the gallery offers long term support and presents research driven exhibitions that bring diverse and often underrepresented voices into thoughtful dialogue, collaborating with collectors, institutions, designers and corporate partners on acquisitions and commissions.
Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 6.30pm, and by appointment