Photographic, video and performance artist Peter Richards (above left) is the winner of the RUA Perpetual Bronze Medal, sponsored by Hamilton Architects, at the 140th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Ulster Academy.
The adjudicator for this year’s exhibition, which features 268 works in a variety of mediums and runs until 2nd January 2022 at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, was Dr Éimear O’Connor, Director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
Cardiff-born Peter, who has been resident in Northern Ireland since 1994 and is Director of the Golden Thread Gallery, won plaudits for his work ‘All That is Left is Debris and Unreliable Narration’ – the image of a chair in the medium of c-prints on halmermuhle rice paper (see middle work).
“The work was made during a solo exhibition entitled And things left undone … which I mounted while Artist in Residence with Art Arcadia at St Augustine’s in the Old Schoolhouse, Derry, during the past summer,” Peter explained.
“My works can be seen as artistic enquiries into how understanding is formed, how truth is subscribed to, and how each of us has the capacity to suspend disbelief in order to continue believing in chosen truths. “I started with the proposition that through time things change, how we see things changes, and how that inevitably impacts on our understanding of others. I ended up working with ways of disappearing and being brought back in an attempt to break a truth I currently subscribe to – and failing. That led to this photograph.”
