Born in Belfast in 1965 and now living in County Sligo, Ronnie Hughes studied at the University of Ulster, Belfast, receiving an MA in Fine Art in 1989. Hughes has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout Ireland and has participated in many group exhibitions worldwide. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Zygotic Tendencies’ presented at Chicago Art Fair and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles. ‘Strange Attractors’, a large survey show of his recent work, took place in 2017 at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) Dublin. Irish Times art writer Gemma Tipton described this show as ‘op art extravaganzas that make your eyes ache; bursts of geometric shapes that seem to warp the flat surfaces of the paper and canvas into pinnacles and troughs; and grids of line and colour to take your senses for a walk through a series of endless mazes’. Hughes’s work has been written about extensively and he has received a multitude of awards, including a one-year residency in New York (PS1, 1990-91) and three-month residencies at Banff Arts Centre, Canada (1994) and Bemis Arts Canter, Nebraska (1997). In 2006 he was awarded both the ‘Irish Artist Fellowship’ – a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center and a two-month residency at the Albers Foundation in Connecticut.