Annette Pugh is a member of Birmingham Artspace and was an elected Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) council member, curator and artist for many years up until 2022. She has a deep-set fascination with archive materials and the printed image. Through a range of media, she explores, edits and re-presents concepts relating to lost identities, restlessness and uncertain moments.
Annette often draws on long discarded and forgotten archive photographic sources such as family photo albums, tourist guides and images on slide and film. As a medium, film offers an instant snapshot, but it fades and deteriorates over time. Painting transposes the medium, allowing the artist to alter, adapt and rewrite the shot, imposing her own nostalgic views and interpretations. By Annette’s hand, the scenes gain in atmosphere and romanticism, heightened by an unrealistic colour palette reminiscent of old photographic tinting techniques.
Annette’s recent work features secluded lakeside and woodland landscapes with traces of human presence, inspired by photographs she has taken of places discovered on walks and revisited at different times of the year. In them, Annette investigates a deep sense of place, exploring our emotional connection to the landscape and the notions of solitude and solace as she invites the viewer to develop narratives around the solitary cabins.
Annette has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art, an MA in Fine Art and an MA in Art and Design Histories. She has exhibited extensively, including at the Royal West of England Academy Open Exhibition (Bristol), the Coventry University Drawing Prize exhibition, the West Midlands Open and the RBSA Open (Birmingham). Her solo show Happenstance took place at The New Art Gallery Walsall in 2023/24. In 2025 Annette was shortlisted for the Cass Art Prize and the Wrexham Painting Prize.
Annette’s work is also exhibited in solo painting and photographic shows including Bittersweet and Verdant at Colley Ison Gallery (Birmingham) and Argentea Gallery (Birmingham). Recent group exhibitions include Between Figuration and Abstraction at Crane Court Gallery in 2025, at Bewdley Museum (Worcestershire) in 2023, the RBSA Prize Exhibition (Birmingham) in 2022, Figurative Art Now at the Mall Galleries, Ikon for Artists at Ikon Gallery Birmingham and Returning Voices (Art\write online project) in 2021, and Hinterland 3 at the Medicine Gallery, Birmingham, in 2020. Annette has contributed to a series of collaborative projects with Art\write and is co-curator of Next Wave, a biennial exhibition for emerging and mid-career artists. Gala Fine Art showed Annette’s work at the annual London Art Fair at the Business Design Centre in Islington in January 2023 and 2024 and at our 10-year anniversary group exhibition, Gala Fine Art: 10 Year, 14 Artists, at The Coningsby Gallery, London, in autumn 2025.
