P E T E R - A B R A H A M S

1992 Advanced Printmaking, Central St Martins College of Art and Design
1984 Post Graduate Diploma, Painting, Royal Academy Schools
1981 BA Hons, Fine Art, Camberwell School of Art

Competitions and Awards

1999 British Council Travel Grant, British Arts Centre, Buenos Aires
1996 Euclid Prize, Visionfest, Liverpool
1995 Space Studios Award, Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust, London
1990 Villiers David Foundation Award, Mexico
1982 Richard Ford Award

Peter Abrahams works across the various media of painting, photography and print, exploring related concerns with form, texture and colour. His recent work has emerged from a kind of photographic note taking - sequences of ‘found’ images he originally made as potential starting points for minimal abstract canvases.

In an on-going series ‘The Active and Contemplative Life’ Abrahams combines two different kinds of images to form diptychs. One element is a real time moment taken on the streets of London, the other a more abstracted detail or still life. Stasis and movement play against each other, as do incidental formal connections.

‘... the upper image usually shows self-absorbed, busy people, often in the City of London. They
might be powerful individuals or at least persons at the service of power, circulating between
appointments or tired after work. The lower image is of nothing in particular.
The materials or objects depicted are in themselves valueless and overlooked even though they may
be transformed from the commonplace by particular circumstances of light or conjunctions of form.
The series is an analysis of the shapes of work and value, and the forms of the ineffectual.
The prosaic instant of the upper image opposes the continuous time of the lower picture.’
(Peter Abrahams 2006).

The images are made as digital archival Lambda prints on Fuji Crystal archive paper face-mounted on Optiwhite glass in editions of 8.

 

 

 

The Active and Contemplative Life 14