Natalya Hughes' multidisciplinary practice is concerned with decorative and ornamental traditions and their associations with the feminine, the body and excess. Through painting, textiles, sculpture and installation, her recent bodies of work investigate the relationship between Modernist painters and their anonymous women subjects.

Using the life and work of major 20th century male artists, Willem de Kooning and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, as well archival case studies of Sigmund Freud, Hughes seeks to examine society’s ‘problems’ with women and the fraught associations that have ultimately determined them.

In 2023 Hughes presented a major interactive exhibition, The castle of Tarragindi, at the Children’s Art Centre at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane. Hughes was awarded the 2022 Michaela and Adrian Fini Fellowship by the Sheila Foundation that supported the creation of an institutional solo exhibition, The Interior, at the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane and subsequent national tour. In 2023, she was an Artist in Residence at The State Buildings, Perth. In 2019, she completed the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Open Studio residency. Hughes is the second of five contemporary Australian artists to feature at Open Studio.