Staff

Michael Peter
PhD, MFA, BA, LTA module

Course Director, Illustration

Tel: 01382 388320
Email: m.peter@dundee.ac.uk
Level 1, Crawford Building,
DJCAD 13 Perth Road DD1 4HT

Biography

Michael studied for his BA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and his MFA at the Glasgow School of Art where he went on to complete his doctoral thesis, The Certainty of Chance: Using Novelistic Reflexivity to Design Aspects of Practice. These research themes have been the basis for numerous projects developed in recent years. Michael has presented his practice in talks and panel discussions including the Hay Literary Festival and in the Dan Graham Pavilion at the Hayward Gallery. He has written catalogue texts for artists such as Nathaniel Mellors and Bruno Peinado. As an artist he has been included in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad including the influential Prix Ricard in France and the seventh British Art Show in the UK. His work deals with an absurdist world evoked in drawings and sculptures, in which things are never quite what they seem, objects often surprisingly morph into something else and materials collude to conceal their true identity.

Research Projects

Moldenke Fiddles On + 10 Drawings

Included as part of The British Art Show 7 In the Days of the Comet. The British Art Show is widely recognised as the most ambitious and influential exhibition of contemporary British art. Organised by Hayward Touring, it takes place every five years and tours to four different cities across the UK. Now in its seventh incarnation, The British Art Show opened in Nottingham, and toured to the Hayward Gallery in London and galleries across the cities of Glasgow and Plymouth. Curated by Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton, the 39 selected artists were chosen on the grounds of their significant contribution to contemporary art in the last five years.

22^nd October 2010-December 2011

Untitled (Hand) & Untitled (Hand) first version

Two sculptures Included in N’Importe Quoi at the Museé d’Art Contemporain. ‘N’Importe Quoi explored the aesthetic and taxonomic possibilities of collections in natural history museums: zoological galleries, comparative anatomy, palaeontology galleries etc. Here the gallery presented an evolution, with a principle of selection mirroring the museological methodologies implied in the curatorial strategy. Unlike the normal evolutionary pattern the artworks showed the revenge of inadequacy, and the survival of the unfit. N’Importe Quoi was designed to show that contemporary art was an "anything", a world of new subjects perceived by many as trivial, vulgar or banal; iconography allowed to appear incongruous and challenging’.

February 13th - April 19^th 2009

Two Clerks, The Nose: Epilogue & untitled ‘Hand’

Two large sculptural works and one room environment (from 2006, 2006 and 2010 respectively) included in the exhibition Recent British Sculpture. The exhibition (curated by Tom Morton) assembled works by young artists working predominantly with sculpture. The title of the show is a nod to British Council touring exhibitions of the sixties and seventies and as such the artists involved all have practices that engage with conceptual histories associated with British sculpture of this period.

November 27^th  2010- January 22^nd  2011

The Adobe Gang, 2009, Modular Sculpture (Blueberries, Runner Beans, Borage, Raspberries), 2009, Expanded Composition n°6, 1986-2009

A collaborative photographic series with Daniel Dewar and Gregory Giquel. The work was part of the group show, INSIDERS - PRATIQUES, USAGES, SAVOIR FAIRE at the CAPC Bordeaux. The project was based on the principle of collection. It emulated the research practices of the first folklorists, from the 19th century onwards, who studied areas by making observations and inventories. Numerous correspondents – participating artists and observers located in different parts of the world – were invited to share information about their specific situations. Sets of objects, new works, accounts of “minor histories” and spontaneous archives: all based on the practice of collecting.

9 October 2009 - 7 February 2010