seams and strata

“Art is a kind of mining,” he said.
“The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth.”

Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter, 1998 [1]

As the Art Gallery of Peterborough enters its 50^th anniversary year in 2024, we are digging into our archives and reconnecting with our founders to engage with our past. Looking through old photographs and archives offers us a chance to marvel at where we’ve been and where we’ve come from; at what has changed and what remains. Sifting through filing cabinets packed with layers of paperwork, notes, and images feels a bit like an archeological dig. We make careful work of it, pausing when we unearth something precious, like a handwritten letter on fine paper or a photograph with younger versions of familiar faces.

This juried exhibition invited artists to submit original works of art that resonate with themes of legacy, archives, nostalgia, ghosts, memory, survival, and growth.

Tree rings and stratified rock mark the passage of time and changing conditions, like layers of once fashionable wallpaper. The strata of our lives can be studied and excavated, unleashing seams of joy, curiosity, wonder, or grief. Throughout three ramps and the main gallery, works by fifty-five artists bring forward the findings of their own excavations.

“[Ghosts] are, in their very bodies (or lack thereof) inhabiting the present and the past, at once.
A ghost is a memory.“

GennaRose Nethercott, 2022 [2]

We would like to thank each of the 140 artists who submitted work to this call. We were blown away. On behalf of the Art Gallery of Peterborough, as well as the jurors who helped us select work for this exhibition, Clayton Windatt, jes sachse, and Kelly Egan: Thank you.