Recycled dreams

3:11pm Thursday 7th February 2008

When I tell Hugh Lee we are previewing his forthcoming retrospective, the Richmond-based artist replies: "I'm not sure you can preview a retrospective. Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"

And I suppose he has a point. But here goes. This weekend, a selection of Lee's work from the past two decades goes on display at the Orleans House Gallery. The show surveys his whole career, which only began with Lee's retirement.

Still, he could give the Young British Artists a run for their money with his paintings, reliefs and sculptures fashioned from discarded items and found objects.

Indeed, there is more than a hint of the golden era of Goldsmiths - Hirst, Emin et al - in his work, even though Lee has never had any formal training. And exhibition curator Mark de Novellis sees echoes of Dadaism and the Surrealists in the way he turns detritus into art.

Lee himself does not like to pinpoint a particular style: "When I started, some people said to me: The trouble about your paintings, Hugh, is that they are all the same'. And other people said: "The trouble is that they are all so different.' Well, they can't both be right so it must be somewhere in between."

Born in Kashmir, he spent most of his working life in the British Civil Service, first in the Ministry of Defence and later in the Treasury. But, after retiring in 1986, he began taking painting lessons and, while he did not get on with the figarative style, he was soon making art every day.

He now works from a room on the top floor of The Vineyard house that he and his wife Penny have shared for the past 30 years.

"I don't like to call it a studio," says Lee. "The walls are entirely covered with strokes of paint where I have wiped my brushes so it is more like a large painting surrounding me."

And the gallery does not stop there. More than 500 of his artworks hang on the walls at his home and, when several were removed to Orleans House this week, the gaps were filled almost immediately.

The Richmond show will be his first public exhibition and Lee jokes that if all five of his children turn up - including Edmund, who is vicar at Christ Church, East Sheen - he will be doing well. Is is nervewracking putting his work up for public inspection?

"Not nervewracking, no, but it has been a bit of a business getting it ready," he answers. "There were three-times as many pieces as were needed for the show, so it has taken Mark some time to choose what to include.

"Then I had to go round and tighten a few screws - quite literally in some cases - and taking them over to Orleans House, we managed to bust three so they had to be fixed."

The final hanging took place on Wednesday and the exhibition catalogue and postcards have just gone to press. It all sounds a long way from the suits and bureaucracy of the civil service.

"Oh, I don't know," says Lee. "You'll find all types at there if you look hard enough."

Hugh Lee: A Retrospective, Orleans House Gallery, Riverside, Twickenham, February 2 until March 30, call 020 8831 6000, visit richmond.gov.uk

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