NYAB Event - Kate Peters "Stranger Than Fiction"

Kate Peters "Stranger Than Fiction"

hpgrp gallery

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hpgrp gallery NY presents Stranger Than Fiction, which features photographs by the British artist Kate Peters. Divided into two series, “Home” and “Stranger than Fiction,” Peters’ images depict both interior and exterior scenes that, while lacking human beings within the frames of the composition, are nevertheless imbued with their presence. Primarily shot in locations across the United States and Europe, the images capture the imprints that have been left behind by the people who have passed through a space, thereby telling the history of human experience united by the smallest, loneliest traces of our existence.

Peters has always been interested in the spaces that we inhabit both in physical and psychological realms; the way that we, as humans, construct personal environments using the smallest, most seemingly insignificant details—an old newspaper on the floor, a drain stopper in the bathtub, a lightbulb in a windowsill, a pink lace canopy above a bed. When we abandon a space, these discarded objects remain, becoming the traces of the experiences we had—the fights with lovers, the evenings spent watching television in a hotel room, the moments of heartbreak and triumph. In Peters’ photographs, these traces are frozen in time, allowing the viewer the opportunity to pause to observe them, to use them to construct a fictional narrative that can be juxtaposed upon the existing space to create a subjective history.

In the “Stranger than Fiction” series, Peters captures scenes that look as if they were taken in a world in which human beings have disappeared. Completely un-staged, they transmit a sense of abandonment and loneliness that is authentic. In Patrol, San Francisco, a police sedan sits in the middle of a long, empty road nestled in the midst of lush, green mountain vegetation. In Hotel Lobby, Chernobyl, the empty frame of a television set stands on a console in the midst of a room full of debris. The scene implies some kind of violence, a bomb that has gone off, a natural disaster that has swept through the building. Despite the absence of life, however, the traces of human presence remain in both the TV and the furniture it rests on, proving that even in landscapes devoid of our presence, human beings continue to exist.

In the series “Home,” Peters depicts domestic settings in the United Kingdom that are experiencing a period of transition. The old inhabitants have moved out, but the imprint of their lives remain; in the white rectangle of wallpaper where a frame once hung in the image Untitled #8 (Missing); in the newspaper laid out on the floor in Untitled #1 (Frank);
in the whistle that hangs from a door knob in Untitled #6 (Whistle). Separately, each image reveals single details about the past inhabitants of each space. Seen together, the images form a cohesive whole, forming a single space inhabited by a group of people who will never physically return, but will forever haunt the empty rooms with the objects they left behind.

About the Artist
Peters was born in Coventry, England in 1980, and studied photography at Falmouth College of Arts in Cornwall. Her photographs have been included in publications such as the British Journal of Photography, Monocle, Exit Magazine, The Independent on Sunday, and The Telegraph Magazine. Her portrait of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was featured on the cover of the December 13, 2010 issue of Time Magazine. Successful both in the publishing world, and in the art world, she has been included in group shows at The Hereford and Format Photography Festivals in the UK, Lennox Contemporary in Toronto and Host Gallery in London. Her 2011 exhibition at hpgrp gallery NY is her first solo show in New York.