Kez Hughes Leda and the swan (after Heather B Swann)

This work falls between the categories of genre and subject painting. Many of my paintings are pictorial documents of the work of other contemporary artists. Here, I present a view of [the Australian artist] Heather B Swann’s sculpture of Leda [in the installation Leda and the swan 2018–23]. The painting is thus, in one way, just a picture of an object; a still life from the everyday world of an artist. But, given Swann’s subject is the story of Leda and the swan, in which the god Zeus disguises himself as a swan and rapes Leda, the picture is also idealised. The Leda myth, like my appropriation project, explores ideas of authenticity, representation and associated issues of power.

Kez Hughes, 2023