Roche Court, East Winterslow, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP5 1BG
Open daily 11am – 4pm, Tel: 01980 862244
Email: [email protected]
www.sculpture.uk.com
PRESS RELEASE
Simon Periton, design for new work, 2014
Simon Periton: Celestial Agriculture
28 March – 17 May 2015
This is Simon Periton’s first exhibition at the New Art Centre and will include new objects and glass
paintings inside the gallery and a specially-commissioned sculpture in the park. Periton’s more
sculptural work has an intricacy and formal directness, whilst his paintings tend to be more visually
ambiguous; dark, gothic and sometimes psychedelic. He is well known for his use of signs, symbols
and patterns from sources as diverse as occultism, colonialism, Islam, punk, Pop Art and politics, but
the prettiness of his work belies the seriousness of his cultural references just as his use of pattern
often obscures his subject matter. On closer examination, even something dainty can be a veil for
something more disturbing and what initially seems like mere decoration actually reveals questions
about outmoded value systems and the desire for effective means of change.
Of late, Periton has become interested in alchemy and the mysticism which surrounds it, as a rich
source of imagery and as a metaphor, but also for the chemical processes and actual laboratory work
it purportedly involved as the basis of modern chemistry. His title for the exhibition, Celestial
Agriculture, comes from an early description of alchemy and seems appropriate for a show in a rural
setting like Roche Court.
Simon Periton made his name with ‘doilies’, works which he cut laboriously by hand from layers of
coloured paper to create complex visual and sculptural effects. Recently, Periton has expanded his
practice and processes to include painting on glass as well as freestanding objects cast in bronze or
cut from steel. He has received a number of important public commissions for the Victoria and Albert
Museum; Site Gallery, Colchester; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and for the University of Oxford.
He studied at Central St Martin’s School of Art and has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad.
PRESS PREVIEW: Saturday 28 March 2015. Free bus from London departing Tate Britain
(Millbank) at 10 a.m. and leaving Roche Court at 3 p.m. Please contact the New Art Centre to
reserve a place. For further information about the exhibition and for images, please contact
Stephen Feeke on 01980 862244 or [email protected].