Dean Hughes makes work out of familiar things: A4 paper, pins, thread, staples, backing card, paper bags, cardboard tubes, and felt tip pens. Hughes makes work that registers as an object in space with properties and values that elicit a phenomenologically-charged viewing experience. Understandably, discourse about his work frequently references the work of artists such as Tom Friedman, Sol Lewitt and Richard Tuttle, and occasionally invokes the dynamic of the modern office environment full of office supplies.
Most recently Hughes has made a series of micro-architectonic wall works incorporating small hole-punched boxes made from backing card and arranged in grid-like structures. In 'Boxes' (2008), a series of boxes is presented in equal and separate spaces, four rows of three columns; a work of the same title presents the boxes without a supporting structure, and a little precariously stacked. Seen together, the works may make associations with ideas about housing or democracy, but what is there is backing card and the possibilities of its function. In his work, Hughes pays careful attention to the positions and motions of everyday inanimate objects, making visible their otherwise invisible desires.

Stacy Boldrick, November 2009 (abridged)