My work is an enquiry into place, the experience of being in place and how memories populate the landscape. My practice involves revisiting places and playing out present experience against memories of other times, so memory becomes superimposed on memory in a system of repetition and variation. These interests manifest themselves in a visual fascination with repetition and variation in the geometry of the built environment, the organic forms of vegetation and weathering, and where the two coincide. The places I revisit tend to be what Marc Augé calls non-places, ‘space not defined as relational, historical or concerned with identity’, places where a near absence of context allows traces of sensation and memory that are normally obscured by the activity of daily life to surface in the mind. My work struggles with the practical impossibility of recapturing these traces yet attempts to create space where viewers can become aware of sensations that are the fragmented remains of their own dreams and memories.
I work mainly with photography, but also, increasingly, with drawing, print making and text. My drawing, at first pursued the same interests as my photography, but the very different nature of the medium has led to new directions in my practice. It has become increasing unconcerned with the appearance of reality, instead engaging in the interpretation and misinterpretation of meaning. Starting from a variety of found and made materials, my drawing lingers between the descriptive and symbolic. My working process involves repeatedly drawing the same things, seeking significant elements, refining ideas and sensations, but often without an endpoint in view, producing provisional versions rather than definitive works.
Steve Perfect, March 2010
Steve Perfect – CV
Education
Oct 2004 – Sep 2006
Central St Martins College of Art and Design
MA Fine Art
Group Exhibitions
Nov 2011
‘Project 101’ The Lab Gallery, New York
Sep 2011
‘Immediate Territory’ Magdalen Road Studios, Oxford
Sep 2011
With AMBruno at the London Art Book Fair, Whitechapel Gallery, London E1
Aug 2011
‘Would you like to?’, OHOS, Reading
Apr 2011
‘Between Space’, Viewfinder Gallery, Brixton, London
Apr 2011
‘At Play 3’, South Hill Park, Bracknell
Apr 2011
‘Need and Desire’, Blue Fin Building,
London SE1
Dec 2010
'Take Off', New Greenham Arts, Newbury.
Nov 2010
'Yossi', Bamoza, Ramat HaSharon, Tel Aviv
Oct 2010
Group Show, New Greenham Arts, Newbury
Apr 2010
'Preambles and Perambulations'
The Dickens Museum, London
Apr 2010
Live Drawing, 'Room to Manoeuvre'
OHOS, Reading
Mar 2010
Live Drawing, The Old Police Station,
Deptford, London
Jan 2010
‘Smorgasbord’ GX Gallery,
Camberwell, London
Oct 2009
With AM Bruno at New York Artists
Book Fair, PS1, New York
Jun 2009
‘Creekside 2009’ curated by
Mark Wallinger, APT, Deptford, London
May 2009
‘Urban Landscape’ Artworks Gallery,
Newcastle
Nov 2008
‘Wrapped and Encased’,
Wolstenholme Projects, Liverpool
Sep 2006
Central St Martins MA Fine Art Show,
Charing Cross Road, London
Nov 2005
‘Discord’, Temporary Contemporary,
Deptford, London
Solo Exhibitions
May 2007
‘Present Work’, The Corn Exchange,
London EC3
Sep 2004
The Corn Exchange, London EC3
Artists’ Groups
AM Bruno artists’ books collective
Remarkable and Curious Conversations
Arjeea21
Collections
My books, ‘Wind Flowers’ and ‘Pavilion’
are in the Tate Gallery collection.
'The Sky is Crying is in the V&A Museum collection of artists books.