Peter Dowie - Dublin, Ireland
Peter’s work looks at the contradictions and complex pressures of using aggressive consumption as the engine for our society, concerning mainly arts place within this market driven society, where a market disconnected from ethical priorities wilfully exploits a naive but generally shared belief in visual truth. He is interested in exploring various paradigms of democracy based on the renegotiation of power during our transactions, the place where our art meets the art market, challenging existing models and expanding the options for new social relationships.
John, Acting Editor - The element in Peter’s work which most interests me is the visual commentary on the de-skilling of specialised trade and labour. He implements his own experiences as a butcher, and thus a very different sort of craftsman, in order to construct visceral imagery which conveys, via his choice of colour and the archaic connotations of the medium of painting, a timelessness and an ethereality, in addition to creating a poignant tribute, or preemptive commemoration, to skill-sets which will, if commerce and mass consumerism triumph, gradually disappear.
