Artist, Author and Curator Michael Petry to Speak at PCA Graduation '16
PCA is proud to announce that acclaimed artist, author and curator Michael Petry will speak at the 2016 graduation ceremony.
Michael Petry, originally from Texas, is an artist, author and curator who has lived in London since 1981. He has a BA from Rice University (Houston), an MA from London Guildhall University, and a Doctor in Arts from Middlesex University. Petry is the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) London, and Guest Curator for Futurecity. He co-founded the Museum of Installation, and was Guest Curator at the Kunstakademiet, Oslo, and Research Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton and was Curator of the Royal Academy Schools Gallery.
As an artist, he currently has a show A History of Thunder on at the Fine Art Society (London) that coincided with his new Prussian Requiem (libretto) for the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall to commemorate the dead of WW1. His one man show A Twist in Time, at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester has just finished, and was in the official collateral exhibition Frontiers Reimagined, at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani, as part of the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia curated by Sundaram Tagore. His performance work Libation to Eros was commissioned by the 2014 Alentejo Triennial, in Portugal, which toured to the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2015, with a show of related works at the Melissa Morgan Gallery, and the Zane Bennett Gallery (Santa Fe). His large scale glass installation AT the Core of the Algorithm, based on the life of Alan Turing was shown at the Glazenhuis, Lommel, Belgium in 2014 and the Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston (2015) to accompany his Campbell Lectures at Rice University, which will be published by the University of Chicago in 2017. His one man show The Touch of the Oracle at the Palm Springs Art Museum (2012) was accompanied by a ten year career review book distributed by Thames & Hudson. Petry was the first Artist in Residence at Sir John Soane’s Museum (2010/11) exhibiting two bodies of work called Bad Seed, which was published as a book, Smoke & Mirrors (2011). His two-volume book Golden Rain (2008) accompanied his installation for the On the Edge exhibition for Stavanger 2008, European Capital of Culture. His work is in museum collections in the US and Europe.
As an author and curator Petry’s books include Installation Art (Thames & Hudson, 1994), Installation in the New Millennium (T&H, 2003), and The Trouble with Michael, a monograph of his practice (Art Media Press, 2001). Petry’s book Hidden Histories: 20th century male same sex lovers in the visual arts (2004) was the first comprehensive survey of its kind, and accompanied the exhibition Hidden Histories he curated for The New Art Gallery Walsall. Petry’s book, The Art of Not Making: The New Artist Artisan Relationship (T&H, 2011) became a European museum touring exhibition as has his current book Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists reinvigorate the Still-Life Tradition (T&H, 2013). The exhibition of Nature Morte started at Ha Gamle Prestegard in Norway (2015) and travels to Konsthallen- Bohusläns, Sweden (2016) and will be seen in London at the Guildhall Art Gallery in 2017.