‘Something as Fresh as Plastic’:  Helen Hughes exhibition opens in Ballina Arts Centre

Ballina Arts Centre recently launched Something as Fresh as Plastic, the latest solo exhibition by Mayo-born artist Helen Hughes, on Saturday, November 15.

Hughes, a graduate of IADT Dublin, works with three core materials in this exhibition: rubber, plastic, and expanding foam. Her practice begins not with sketches or a fixed vision, but with the materials themselves. Speaking to The Mayo News, she explained that she rarely plans her pieces. “A lot of the time, I’m fighting with their functions. It’s a battle of wills,” The Westport native says. “I'm really looking for the materials kind of do half the work in a way. I'm kind of guiding them and controlling them,” She explains

Rejecting commercially driven ideas of design and polish, Hughes instead highlights the internal dramas and behaviours of materials, giving them centre stage in her sculptural objects. Although her work often carries visual cues from pop culture, kitsch, and surface-level seduction, it is underpinned by a deep, tactile engagement and slow, personal craft.

The materials she uses, mass-manufactured plastics, rubber rings, polystyrene, and foam, are usually hidden inside walls or packaging, rarely acknowledged for their visual potential. By placing them in the gallery, Hughes invites viewers to reconsider what is typically regarded as disposable or purely functional.

The exhibition title, Something as Fresh as Plastic, originated from a phrase she encountered while reading that resonated with her. “Fresh,” she notes, can also mean bold or cheeky, while plastic, despite its environmental baggage, remains “seductive”.