Des Hughes: I Want To Be Adored : Art / Books : 9781908970435 : 05 Mar 2021 : The first comprehensive monograph on this British artist, presenting over a decade of work. A witty, dark and sensitive humour runs through Des Hughes's work, delivered in a seemingly deadpan tone. His practice is an obsessive, physical enquiry into the traditions of sculpture, rethinking conventional sculptural methods and materials. Nothing is as it first appears; crudely modelled clay is meticulously cast in resin but, with the inclusion of marble dust, it could have been either carved and polished from a block of stone or fashioned from a piece of chewing gum. He collects, he dismembers, he puts things back together in fragments, or leaves pieces in an unfinished state - or just leaves them in pieces. He is a Surrealist de nos jours. At the same time, there is always a tender acknowledgment of the twentieth-century modernist canon of sculpture, and of the fragile heroism inherent in the handm