Michael Peel'DOGMA - MODERN WORLD'4 November - 10 December 2005
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Michael Peel works in the media of photography and printmaking. Since 1985, Peel has been producing screen-printed poster-works and photographic installations under the title ‘Modern World’. The content for the works is drawn predominantly from political images found in the British media that Peel re-photographs, manipulates and combines with text. Peel has taken a deliberate strategy in creating defined structures that can have varying content imposed upon them; particularly the poster-works where their format makes it possible to reach a large popular audience by fly-posting on billboards, street hoardings and lamp-posts as well as being displayed in galleries and other public buildings. Over the past 20 years, Peel’s work has voiced comments on Thatcher’s and Blair’s Britain, including the Falklands War, Northern Ireland and two Gulf Wars.
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For his exhibition at Standpoint Gallery, Michael Peel presented new large scale photographic installations based around media reports of events and issues since September 2001, leading up to the ‘War on Terror’, the current invasion of Iraq and the continuing opposition to that intervention by millions of protesters worldwide. Also on display, was a selection of limited edition prints of posters made during the first Iraq war. The political climate at this time leads to a strong sense of frustration, futility and despair of the current presence of occupying forces in Iraq and at the continually increasing powers of the state to curb individual freedom in the name of security. History, ideology and dogma are some of the factors that influence this situation. These works take mediated images of some of these events and link the photo-mechanical structure involved in their production to micro-biological cell formations found in nature which may multiply, degenerate or mutate. These mutations or transgressions act as a metaphor or equivalent for the content of this exhibition. Michael Peel has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, including solo exhibitions at the I.C.A, London, the Orchard Gallery, Derry and Standpoint Gallery. A complete collection of MODERN WORLD posterworks is held at the Imperial War Museum, London.
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