NEWS: Peter Hanmer – Seeking Armageddon @ Newcastle Arts Centre

Seeking Armageddon brings together over 10 years of apocalyptic musings in sculpture, installation and ink from award-winning North East-based visual artist Peter Hanmer. After recently exhibiting in venues such as the BALTIC, The Cheeseburn Sculpture Gardens and Mall Galleries London, Hanmer presents intricately crafted miniature worlds together for the first time alongside new revelations in his debut gallery solo show at Newcastle Arts Centre from Saturday 15^th October-Saturday 12^th November.

Evoking the spirit of Gulliver’s Travels, Hanmer blurs the line between fantasy and reality; like static theatres, these works frame apocalyptic narratives and immerse the audience in them. A beaked prophet promises salvation from a tub, masked gentry play with fire, skeletons march and a rubber duck poses as the source of divine power or divine irony. Hanmer’s inimitable style is humorous and provocative, colourfully satirical and grotesque, forcing the viewing of society’s ills through the carnivalesque. His work is comparable to that of Belgian artist James Ensor, and he draws inspiration from the writings of Plato, John the Elder, Rousseau and Žižek. Seeking Armageddon stages very human apocalypses; ecological, technological and democratic.

Peter Hanmer: Seeking Armageddon is at Newcastle Arts Centre from Saturday 15^th October-Saturday 12^th November.