Abstract

‘Time Amongst Pictures, Bruno’s Dream and Other Stories’ brings together works by Oliver Hoffmeister and Kevin Petrie, united by a shared interest in attention, memory, and the transformation of source material through printmaking. The exhibition presents printmaking as a reflective and imaginative act: images shaped by close looking, lived experience, and the quiet movement between observation and inner vision.
Kevin has worked with printmaking in various ways for over thirty-five years and is especially known for his artwork and books on ceramics, glass and print. In recent years, he has focused more on painting and drawing and lately returned to printmaking on paper. Attending Northern Print workshops and receiving technical support has been central to Kevin’s re-engagement with etching and recent explorations of dry point and collagraph methods. The results of which are shown this exhibition.
Much of the work has emerged from Kevin’s interest in the writing and thought of Dame Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) and his engagement with the Murdoch research community. Murdoch is known for her twenty-six novels and three books on philosophy. Her novels deal with good and evil, sexual relationships, morality and the power of the unconscious. Murdoch’s work also promoted ‘unselfing’ and escaping the ‘fat relentless ego’. Linked to this is the idea of ‘paying attention’ to other people and nature. We might think of this as mindfulness or seeking ‘presence’ today.

Included in the exhibition is a series of small etchings partly inspired by Murdoch’s 1969 novel ‘Bruno’s Dream’ where an elderly man, reflects on his life and enthusiasms, like stamps and spiders, while trying to reconcile aspects of his life. Along the way various people connect with and support him. This work was shown in 2024 at Kevin’s exhibition ‘Web of Life’ at the Iris Murdoch Archives at Kingston University. Here they are presented to create a linear narrative in which the Bruno character goes on dreamlike journey. Along the way he encounters fear, struggle, connection with others (human and non-human), memories, and a flood!

Kevin’s work features in a new book on Murdoch by Chinese scholar Professor He Weiwen – Arts and Morals: Iris Murdoch's Fictional World. The Flemish literary journal Deus Ex Machina has published Kevin’s drawings in their recent ‘Murdoch’ issue. Several of his prints and a painting are now part of the Kingston University Archives and Special Collections. In 2024 Printmaking Today, the journal of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, featured a profile on Kevin and his Murdoch inspired work by Murdoch scholar Dr Miles Leeson.

Also on show are new carborundum prints. These pieces explore combinations of the human form and nature. The underpinning idea here is that we are part of a co-reliant web of life or ecosphere. Recent research on Murdoch has started to link her thinking to ecological ideas and several of her novels feature intense experiences in landscape or moments of attention to nature. Kevin’s pieces explore this idea. From this a new theme is emerging for Kevin around the ‘patron saint of the northern England’ St Cuthbert (c. 634–687). Cuthbert was both bishop, and hermit at Lindisfarne or Holy Island, and his burial at Durham led to the founding of city. He is cited as an early ecologist and associated with the protection of wildlife (especially eider or ‘Cuddy’ ducks). Kevin’s emerging work on this theme explores Cuthbert as a figure alive in nature but also his afterlife. His coffin was opened six times over the last 1300 years and his preserved body in part created his cult as a revered Saint. Kevin’s latest work ‘Saint Cuthbert – Let history lie!’ is a large scale print and references the continued fascination with his remains.

Also showing is work by Oliver Hoffmeister (b. 1995, Chesterfield) a painter-printmaker who studied at Newcastle University and the Royal Drawing School. His work develops from intense observation during his 2024 residency at the Museo del Prado.