Sunday, November 18, 2018

Manifesto of Peter Peryer

In 2006, I spent an afternoon with photographer Peter Peryer and wrote this feature for the long-defunct Nakid magazine. As a tribute to a man who always made a point of saying "hi Virginia" as we brushed shoulders in Ozone, here is that story. Yes, it's out of date, but it's a snapshot of a moment and a colourful zoomed-in life. 


Photographer Peter Peryer has clear views on his vision for the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. VIRGINIA WINDER finds herself writing his manifesto.

Peter Peryer is pacing.
His brown leather shoes creak on the matai floor of his New Plymouth home as he walks and talks.
The photographer is a lecturer on the move to an audience of one.
“I’m talking aloud while I’m thinking, but also trying to give you something of a manifesto,” he chuckles.
When Peryer sits at his dining table, he writes on a big desk-pad placed vertically and a little tilted. A diamond between us.
One slowly filling with Peryer gems, bullet points, comments passed, ideas to be explored.
“I’m quite iconoclastic,” he says.
The cherished beliefs he’s most apt to attack are those of the contemporary art world.
And yet, this is the world he walks in.
Some of his photographs are in the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery latest show, Viewfinder.
This exhibition showcases many artists whose works are part of the gallery’s collection.
He also has works at Pataka museum and gallery in Porirua as part of the Contemporary New Zealand Photographers exhibition. 
The show has an accompanying book celebrating 20 of this country’s greatest photographers, including Marti Friedlander, Anne Noble, and Laurence Aberhart.
There are also Peryer photos now showing in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.
In 1985 he received the Fulbright scholarship to travel to the United States and has been included in the Sydney Biennale twice. Peryer was awarded a Laureate Award in 2000 by the New Zealand Foundation for the Arts and is also is an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM).
Patrons of boutique bar Powderoom will also know his photographs because they have been part of the interior design on and off for the past few years.
They include Isabella, the realistic model baby; Lake, with a yellow and blue slide; Wrestlers, two torsos and arms entwined.
Calla lily petals
And he’s had a drive-by exhibition in the empty Regent building on the corner of Devon West and King streets, where Verge Gallery now resides.
Peryer moved from Auckland to New Plymouth five years ago. At the time he was working with former director Greg Burke on the solo show, The Left Hand Raised.
“I came down for three months… but if you are interested in the arts, because of the Govett-Brewster, this is a good provincial city to be in – that’s a fact.
“There’s art traffic,” he says, prompting images of papier mache cars parading along Devon St.
“Particularly the artists.”
Ans Westra, Lee Bul and Michael Smither wave from the garish vehicles.
Puke Ariki’s library is another plus. Peryer and his personal assistant Paula Frost visit about three times a week, pausing for coffee at the Daily News Café.
Frost is an elegant woman who holds herself like a ballet dancer, while Peryer appears to be a serious man of strong physique and mind, who often looks at life through thick, dark-framed reading glasses.
“I’m not bad for 64,” he says.
In person, he is actually a man full of humour, with an ability to laugh at himself and the world.
“I’m quite jolly aren’t I?”
And later. “Peryer, it rhymes with merrier,” he says a glass of Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc in one hand.
Lily
“Peter and Paula” also has a ring about it. He and Frost are obviously a couple.
“She’s got a light about her,” Peryer says.
But their relationship is opposite to the traditional.
“We work together and live in different houses.”
His home is a weather-board, painted the palest blue, and perched on the brim of a gully that looks over towards Frankley Rd.
“This is the age of post-provincialism – no, I didn’t make that phrase up. This is the age of the Internet. I probably couldn’t be living in New Plymouth if it wasn’t for the Internet.”
Peryer has a strong historical connection with Taranaki.
“In the late ‘30s, before I was born, my parents ran the Breakwater Hotel,” he says.
His father, Milton Archibald Peryer, also had a photographic leaning and took many pictures of the port. There are now copies held in Puke Ariki.
“On my mother’s side, I’m from some of those old Coast families – Power, Lawn, Brophy, Fleming,” he says.
His mother was Louisa Florence Brewer, whose mother was a Coaster.
“I do like the way I have got relations here.”
Yet he’s not certain if this is the place he belongs. “I don’t know where my home is really. But I’m not anxious to move on.”
Passionfruit flower
Born on All Souls Day at Auckland in 1941, Peryer was raised mostly in rural Northland. He was a strict Catholic, but is no longer a Christian, although religious objects do appear among his works.
A former teacher – he’s working at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels – says he doesn’t work in series.
In fact, Peryer reckons if he were to take photography at secondary school his approach would be unacceptable.
“I would fail,” he says.
“I was 33 when I started photographing.”
He is self-taught and feels sad for others who feel as if they have to go to art school or do a course to have the confidence to follow their dreams.
“I want to try and give people hope… technically photography has got easier. Courses should be concentrating on the art, meanwhile, courses get longer.
“The craft is simple now,” he says.
Peryer is, of course, talking about the disappearance of darkrooms due to digital cameras. He got his first in 2000 and is now on to his fifth because of the rapid evolution of technology.
One discarded camera has been dissected by the photographer and laid out on a tray, like a miniature city, for close examination by the science-minded man.
In fact, that’s where his photography began.
“I got very interested in science when I was at secondary school and I did some science subjects at university and one of the skills I picked up at university was how to use a microscope.”
Peryer has a Bachelor of Arts in English, a Masters in Education, and “quite a bit of a science degree”.
“That was my problem – I couldn’t find out what I liked most,” he says.
“I think I’m most interested in biology. And that is reflected in a lot of my subject matter.”
Looking through his online archives, it’s clear what he means.
Peryer often focuses on single specimens, like a yellow rubber frog hand puppet, a monarch butterfly captured in profile and in black and white, a feather, a cape gooseberry, a caterpillar, a cloud and even Mt Taranaki. They are clear, uncluttered pictures.
A cape gooseberry
“I edit it down to the best statement…”
He’s even tougher on what he allows to be shown. “Some years I might pass only two to three.”
Isn’t he harsh on himself?
“If I was Colin McCahon you wouldn’t say that,” he says.
His latest photo is of a Peryer-grown tomato on a carved wooden foot from Bali, which is actually an incense holder. It’s called The Holy Tomato.
This was inspired by his studies of Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali.
The previous work was taken in August. It’s a collection of colourful shapes made from sponge and laid in an oval.
It’s called Matisse and hangs on the wall behind Peryer, like a thought bubble.
One that describes the man’s wildly whirring brain
“There are four to five months between that photograph (the Matisse) and that photograph (the jolly tomato) and nothing in between but a lot of reading,” he says.
On the table beside him is a book titled What’s Wrong With Contemporary Art? by Australian art critic Peter Timms.
“It rarely leaves my knee, because he’s one of the few people… such courage,” he whispers the last words in awe.
“It gives me courage too.”
So what’s wrong with the Govett-Brewster?
Peryer doesn’t like the question and explains he would rather be upbeat about the gallery. It could be a case of not biting the hand that feeds him.
But he can’t help himself.
“They are on track – that doesn’t mean to say it’s a perfect model.”
Monarch butterfly
“It’s known nationally, internationally as a place where there are ideas thrown around; where there’s discourse.”
Then he mutters to himself, “I’m probably being a little over-generous.”
He pauses, his head up and turned like the lion statue he caught on film at Copenhagen, Sweden, in 1997.
“There is room for improvement.”
Here come the bullet points.
  • Get a website that works.
  • Get their collection online.
“If they are going to pay all that money for a Lee Bul shouldn’t it be online?”
Peryer pauses. “What they show…”
He looks out the window towards Frankley Rd.
“…the gallery has to be very careful that it’s not developing a house style. It’s a particular take.”
That’s why he thinks Greg Burke stayed two years too long. Five years is enough for a director, but Burke was in New Plymouth for seven years before taking the helm of Toronto’s Power Plant art gallery in August last year.
“Greg Burke is getting married,” he says.
Apparently he is engaged to manga video artist Hye Rim Lee from Korea, who has shown works at the Govett-Brewster.
“It’s a fact,” Peryer says.
Then he’s back on his gallery improvements.
·         Don’t collect works.
“It’s expensive, the costs are ongoing. Sooner or later if you collect work, you are going to need a bigger building.”
He misses the irony of his comments, considering his latest works on show at the gallery hail from its own collection.
·         Invest in bringing artists to Taranaki.
“I would rather have seen the gallery put money into resources for visiting artists,” he says. “In my travels I meet many artists who would love to come to New Plymouth.”
And he’s back on art traffic and the sharing of ideas.
Weta
“We don’t make it very easy for artists to come and stay in New Plymouth for a week, or a month, or a year.”
When he arrived in the city, he suggested to Burke that instead of adding to the collection, the gallery could invest in an apartment for artists in residence. But with the rising costs of housing, he wondered if that opportunity had now passed.
Peryer does think the former director did a good job during reign at the Govett-Brewster.
“He brought a lot to us and we have to be very careful who the next incumbent is.”
Could be it be Peryer himself?
“No, no, no! I couldn’t stand all the meetings. Saving up the minutes and throwing away the hours – it would drive me demented.”
He also has fears about the impact of the proposed World Centre for Len Lye.
“I’m completely behind there being a Len Lye centre here,” he says.
But he would prefer it was completely independent of the Govett-Brewster.
"Already it will have affected who has applied for the new director’s job; the new position,” he says.
Peryer is pacing again, his shoes squeaking on the turn beside a table topped with metal Leggo sculptures of the Eifel Tower and the Empire State Building.
He has his hands in the pockets of his black jeans, and he talks like a businessman dictating a letter to a secretary.
“New paragraph,” he orders, to giggles from the shorthand scribe.
 “Anyone who applied may have considered that in the all likelihood they might have to be a project manager.
“It’s a fact – why do you think they are taking so long getting a new director. The World Centre for Len Lye is such a massive project and such an ongoing one that it could easily distract the Govett-Brewster from its true mission, which up until now has been right on course.”
He paces into the kitchen, pours himself another wine, and turns back for his dramatic delivery.
“I fear that it is a Trojan horse
Ludicrously, visions of artists dressed in armour from Troy in 1193 BC and wielding blades of flashing metal from the Len Lye collection appear unbidden in the scribe’s mind.
“I think this is a big danger. I really do think it could bring the Govett-Brewster down.”
This definitely is the manifesto of Peter Peryer.




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