Skip to main content

Peter Hanmer

Newcastle upon Tyne
Artist, sculptor, winner of the Gillian Dickinson North East Young Sculptor of the Year Award, 2017. Digital Citizen, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.
Contact
Links

Drawing on varied interests including history, philosophy and storytelling; I create allegorical, dystopian and Fantastical sculptural works chiefly in miniature. These reflect my interest in the power of art as a cultural and political critique, presenting intricately sculpted worlds imbued with meaning.

In 2019’s Plato's Lair (redux) I drew on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and constructed a wooden potting shed at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art within which resided a society of miniature bird like figures; their only reality. The otherness of the miniatures provides a distance for the viewer who observes a different yet identifiable character; an allegory for themselves.

Plato, Descartes and todays builders of computer simulations generate forms of scepticism about the credibility of our ordinary experience. They raise doubts about how we can distinguish reality from substitutes made of shadows, dreams or virtual realities. My work proposes that our reality is essentially a political reality made of images, slogans and fantasies.

 

Become a member

We support our members with: insurance, networks, space, opportunities, R&D awards, profiling, advice and mentoring.
Become a member