Peter Driver
I make things, or make things happen, using printmaking, painting, walking, birding, collaboration and other procedures. Through this diverse output I attempt to integrate art and life, creating new knowledge through field and studio research. The work includes presenting my experiences of long-distance walks, exposing the ambiguities of text in a woodcut print, and wrestling many variables into abstract paintings: a variety of responses to the wonder and brokenness of living in the world.
My woodcuts might set a short text within a matrix formed of colour-play, geometric sequence, or the natural patterns found within the grain of the woodblocks. The texts often present a phrase intended to expose a diversity of interpretations and meanings.
The paintings are always abstract and mostly about painting. Colour-interactions, shape, tone, mark and structure combine in a complex set of relationships, over time. Source material can come from a wide range of stimuli: pop music, memory, the natural world, or field research. Each painting is a struggle between conflicting forces. Paint gets added, pondered, scrapped-off, covered over… it is an iterative, anxious performance. If there are rules, I break them.
As an organiser and collaborator, I also achieve my objectives by making opportunities for others, particularly for young and emerging artists.
PETER DRIVER CV
EDUCATION:
MA Fine Art, 2014-15: Winchester School of Art
BA (Hons) Fine Art, 2011-14: Winchester School of Art
Foundation in Art and Design, 1981-82: Cambridge School of Art
SOLO/DUO EXHIBITIONS/PROJECTS:
2025 (forthcoming artists' book publication) Widdershins Walk: round the edges of Reading (with Geoff Sawers and Peculiarty Press)
2024 Georgics: visual poems on farming (with Ingrid Jensen), Leominster Information Centre
2018 A Walk For Stanley - solo walking project, Instagram #aWalkForStanley
2017 Imagined Futures - K6 Gallery, Southampton
2017 For Such a Time as This - Brock Keep, Reading
2016 A Gaol Ballad and Other Assorted Love Songs - (with Amy-Rose Holland), Brock Keep, Reading
2016 WordUp! - (with Robert Fitzmaurice), multiple venues across Reading and online.
2015 ecologies of optimism and dissent, Jam Factory, Oxford
2014 I'm glad you're alive! - (with Lydia Heath), Brock Keep, Reading
2013 Peter Driver: Woodcuts - Winchester Discovery Centre
PUBLICATIONS
Forthcoming: Widdershins Walk, 2025 (with Geoff Sawers) publisher: Peculiarity Press
A Walk For Stanley, 2019, (published by Peculiarity Press) https://peculiaritypress.com/awalkforstanley
CURATION/ORGANISING
Boiling Point Artist Collective: practice post art school, 571 Gallery Reading, 2023
Beyond otherness, 571 Gallery Reading, 2021
Fire & Water, 2016 OHOS, Reading
Accretion (with Kirsty Smith and Nicky Bell), 2015, Brightbyte Studio, Southampton
Print as a Verb (with Chris Mercier), 2015, OHOS, Reading
Desire Lines, 2015, OHOS, Reading
Recent History (with Elly Langlois), 2014, Brooks Centre, Winchester
GROUP EXHIBITIONS/PROJECTS:
2024
LAYERS, The Department Store, Brixton, London
LICK, Safehouse 1, London
Condition Blah, Blah, Blah, Turbine House, Reading
2023
Do Not Swallow, Safehouse 1&2, London
Five Years Time, Alfred Arcade, Southampton
Where The Two Worlds Meet, Biscuit Factory, Reading
2022
Inbetweeners, Chapel Arts Andover
Artists for Ukraine, 571 Gallery, Reading
Newsprint Open 2022, Three Works, Scarborough
2021
Relational Beings, Chapel Arts Andover
Newsprint Open 2021, Three Works, Scarborough
2020
Saturated Space, Sandham Memorial Chapel
2019
'silence | absence' - Broad Street Mall, Reading (curated by Richard Bentley)
'Let Us Dissent' - SPUDworks, Sway (CAS associate artists' group show)
'The Arborealists and Guests - The Art of Trees'', Turbine House, Reading
'Triangulations', Brock Keep, Reading (with Sarah Britten-Jones and Robert Fitzmaurice)
'In The Round', Chapel Arts, Andover (CAS associate artists' group show)
2018
Block_Chain>The Power of Two - online residency at
block-chain.chapelartsstudios.co.uk (Block_1)
2017
'ChaosContrastsChange', Brock Keep, Reading (studio group show curated by Janet Curley Cannon)
'Footprints', Winchester School of Art, (group show curated by Tessa Atton for the University of Southampton Festival of Doctoral Research)
2015
'10Days Winchester: CHALK', Winchester Gallery, Winchester
'The Laboratory of Dissent', Winchester Gallery, Winchester
'Meeting Point', Crypt Gallery, London (Blue Curry, Mia Taylor, Ian Dawson, Nicola Thomas, Stephen Cooper, Amy-Rose Holland, Kirsty Smith, et al.)
2014
Platform Graduate Award 2014, (selected show) Aspex Gallery Portsmouth
Someone & Something, Aspex Gallery Portsmouth
'Tabula Rasa' - The Bargehouse, London
Insight 2014, New Greenham Arts, Newbury
Transmediale Festival, Berlin (group installation)
2013
'Raison D'etre' - Mottisfont National Trust, Hants
Outlook Changeable - OHOS group exhibition, Brock Keep, Reading
Searching, always - arjeea21 group exhibition, Gallery 49, Bracknell
2012
Echo - arjeea21 group exhibition, Brock Keep, Reading
TEACHING/TUTORING
Winchester School of Art - Teaching Fellow in Fine Art 2016-22
Open Hand OpenSpace, Reading - Printmaking tutor
COLLABORATIVE PERFORMANCES:
Andover March for Optimism, Andover Town Centre, 2015
'Encounters, Andover': production and free distribution of 200 woodcut prints inspired by Encounters Shop, Andover High Street, 2014
'March for Optimism', Winchester City Centre, 2014
Art&Ride, 24 hour project as part of 10Days, Winchester bus routes, 2013 (with Public Works)
Space for Peace, Winchester Cathedral 2013, (curated by Kimvi Nguyen)
RESIDENCIES
In-Situ, micro residency at Brierfield Mill, Lancashire, 2021
Block_Chain>The Power of Two, online residency at block-chain.chapelartsstudios.co.uk, 2018
Basing House archaeological dig, Hampshire: artist in residence, July-August 2013
AWARDS
Arts Council England project grant 2023 - for Boiling Point Artist Collective
Arts Council England - Developing Your Creative Practice full grant 2021.
Arts Council England project grant 2021 - (on behalf of OHOS) for Beyond Otherness
Arts Council England grant for the arts to develop March for Optimism, Andover, 2015 (as part of Chapel Arts Studios pop-up project 'The Bureau of Exchange')
