Gwendraeth House Project
The 30 year long Gwendraeth House project’s B&W negatines are slowly getting digitlised. Thankyou to all at USW photo department for their assistance in my Fellowship capacity.
Its an enjoyable process reassessing negatives that i originally passed over. The notion of time is a key compoment in this project.The photograph as a dissolved document in time is also something that I’m interested. The fading residue of something undefined and disappearing, is something in the back of my mind and inspires me as well. The early photographic experiments of trying to materially capture / preserve images is an inspiration – im thinking of the Sir William Herschel’s experiments and his letters that on the same page contain texts and dissolving photographic images. Also, a big inspiration is the album of fragile photo experiments by Hippolyte Baynard. Subject to time and its entropic forces these dissolving images become celebrations of trace, story and memory.
Nothing Matters / Silvers of Space Research Lecture
It was an enjoyable experience sharing the development of my photo art, ideas and processes to the ECDR research environment at USW, where i’m currently Visiting Research Fellow.
The presentation explored existential ideas of dissolution, transformation and non material ‘appearances’. This was followed by an illuminating Q&A session.
https://photographic.research.southwales.ac.uk/
Nothing Matters / Silvers of Space - press release
Peter Finnemore’s photo-artwork revolves around the idea of ‘making visible’. In this informal presentation he will be discussing the evolution of a range of core photographic ideas that inform his practice.
Finnemore is a unique and significant presence in the arena of contemporary fine art photographic practice. He is noted for his long-term photo art projects on the human condition, generational memory, home, nature, culture, history and post-industrial landscapes.
His working practice combines a fluid exchange between the language of photography and fine art sensibilities. These artworks are manifested as photographs (analogue & digital), video art, installations, the artist’s book, text art, performance and assemblages on canvas
Finnemore's artworks belie a singular vision which occupies an alchemic, mytho-poetic territory between matter-of-fact documentation and lyrical transformation / magic realism. Marked by critical intelligence, visual dexterity, pathos and trickster humour, his images operate simultaneously on a number of levels, subjectively examining cultural and historical forces, whilst occupying the wide emotional and intellectual spectrum from the profound to the absurd. His recent photo-art book project – Looking For Signs, set in India is an ambitious 300-page subjective psycho-geographic mapping of self and place.
A graduate from the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Michigan, Finnemore represented Wales at the 1997 Venice Biennale. His artwork is in a number of public collections, including; Arts Council Collection, Princeton Museum of Art and Chrysler Art Centre. He lives and works in Wales and is currently Research Fellow at USW.
Shaping Art in Wales
A big thankyou to Dr Ceri Thomas for including my artwork in his new hardcover book Shaping Art in Wales, a hybrid book, part biography, part art survey, that outlines the impact of two curators from Swansea’s Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum - David Bell and Kathleen Armistead. Whose vision of art and curation in Wales from 1945 to the 60’s is intrinsic to the cultural memory of the nation.
Two of my photo-art pictures are included in the chapter - Postscript 1970’s and Beyond, hich includes my installation / intervention with Ivor Roberts Jones’ bronze bust of painter Sir Kyffin Williams. Shown in the Brought to Light Exhibition (Oriel Mostyn) and in the Sight and Sound exhibition (National Galleries and Museum of Wales). I am appreciative that Ceri has included a substantive quote from my artist statement about the ideas behind these artworks and installations. Which examines the David Bell and Iorwerth Peate debates of taste, class and value of Academic and Vernacular art.
Published by Ali Anwar of the H’mm Foundation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjFKY7ZwIbc
