Peter Peryer: A Careful Eye

Installation view. Photo: John Lake

Peter Peryer had his first solo exhibition at a public gallery at The Dowse in 1977. Four decades later The Dowse is staging Peter Peryer: A Careful Eye, a celebration of of one of New Zealand’s most renowned artists.

More a selection than a survey, this exhibition reveals the world as seen through the artist’s ‘careful eye’. Anchored by Hunua (1975), a key work from his first show with The Dowse, A Careful Eye draws links between Peryer’s current practice and earlier series. Bringing together over 50 photographs, the exhibition reveals the compositional and thematic motifs that Peryer has employed over 40 years of art-making.

Potent, uncanny, beautiful and strange, Peter Peryer: A Careful Eye captures the mystery in objects and scenes we often take for granted in everyday life—and the narratives and stories which can be found in them.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new publication with texts by Jim Barr and Mary Barr and exhibition curator Sian van Dyk. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Charnwood Trust and Creative New Zealand for this publication.