Newcastle University

There exist a number of intelligent and thoughtful writings about the work of Peter Peri. They are excellent texts, about an excellent artist. But what may now be required, I suggest, is a small insubordination of so much intelligent excellence. Insubordination is part of Peri’s practice and, further below, I will offer some writing that may be consistent with this interest of his; writing that is not actually unintelligent (although I can do that, too), but which is, shall we say, a bit lax – willfully careless – or even, in its own way, a dissolution. Peri has said that: “The subject of my work could be thought of as dissolution, or more precisely the fetishisation of dissolution within modernity.”

His work has been described, in the writings about him, as being in a dialogue with the now extinguished utopian ideals, or grand value systems, of early modernism, and the writers who have stated this are, of course, all correct in their description. It’s been noted that Peri’s grandfather was an early Constructivist and in a sense Constructivism is Peri’s inheritance fortune – the art historical equivalent of a decayed noble estate, amongst whose treasures Peri, the young heir, may wander, enjoying whatever uses or strange squanders that the rights of ownership allow him.

Extract from text by Neal Brown. Text in full can be read on blackboard