David Hughes is a designer and artist who uses LEGO® Bricks to create contemporary art through careful and meticulous designs. Although he also creates LEGO® mosaic works of art, the pieces we have on show in Brick by Brick are all sculptures.
David uses only the basic, iconic LEGO® brick to push the limits of what it can become. He uses the hard, mass produced plastic bricks to create nuanced and graceful sculptures capturing the emotion and essence of the subject.
In The Stuff I Didn’t See and its sister piece Leave Me Alone, Don’t Leave Me Alone, Hughes goes beyond those of his works that reference popular culture or express the strength and grace of the human body, and explores the themes of mental illness.
They’re pieces that David made almost as art therapy, trying to sum up how he felt when he was suffering from severe anxiety and depression. The Stuff I didn’t See, in particular is a very personal piece in which David wanted to see if he could capture his feelings of loss, despair and pain in LEGO® bricks, and express his desire of wanting to shut out the world. At one level, while he feels that this is a sad piece, he has also said that it was incredibly cathartic for him to make.
David feels that his art engages with people because it appeals all of us who played with LEGO as children whilst, at the same time, exploring grown-up ideas of contemporary art and design.
