the Exhibition

John Peter Askew is an artist who works with the camera to create dense, poetic images of everyday life and of the historical forces that shape who we are. For more than twenty years he regularly visited the Russian city of Perm, the easternmost city in Europe, and photographed the life of one family - the Chulakovs. This extraordinary body of work, drawn from an archive of nearly 20,000 negatives, transcends its subject matter and transforms the quotidian into the sublime. These photographs ask us to imagine the possibility of a better, more playful world and point towards who we might yet become. In Askew’s lens simple domestic scenes such as family meals, walks, or children playing - become striking images revealing the beauty of a world not involved in the fetishisation of consumption in a capitalist society.

In 2019 these photographs were shown for the first time at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland. To accompany the exhibition the Kerber, Berlin published a 384 page book that was launched at the Photographer’s Gallery, London. In the introductory essay Alistair Robinson writes ‘Here, art returns to its true role as a space of the intellectual and affective ‘commons’ in which ideas and experiences can be shared’. The exhibition at Pushkin House in London, designed by the artist in response to the architecture of the building, shows photographs from the book and exhibition – and adds to their number and depth with a slideshow and newly printed photographs.

The project We has taken over a quarter of an artist’s lifetime to bring to fruition, having begun while Askew studied at Goldsmiths’ College. Perm is the easternmost city in Europe, and marks the border between continents and cultures. The city has provided Askew with the means to observe the long-term consequences of the transition from Soviet state to Western market capitalism, and ovservations of what another type of social life might be. In this microcosmic world, the dynamics of a single family’s life are played out in a house at the edge of a provincial city, and which, implicitly, allow us to register and understand longer historical forces that only become apparent through the play of time. The accumulated observations of quotidian life in the post-Soviet era offer us a highly particular form of poetry made from an intimate portrait of a single family.

‘A beautiful, close, incredibly touching and vast photographic story.’ Charlotte Cotton

‘His pictures have to be inspected for their secrets, for their lightning strikes and unexpected rhymes.’ Ian Jeffrey

‘Whether in the gallery or on the page, this is commonplace beauty to make you think.’ Paul Carey-Kent

‘As the great Russian novels of the nineteenth Century showed, sometimes the human condition is most profoundly articulated by the unassuming fabric of quotidian lives. With We, John Peter Askew accomplishes something similar in visual form.’ Dave Pritchard

The book ‘We: Photographs from Russia 1996–2017’ is on sale at the PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOKSHOP.

Curated by Elena Zaytseva

THE ARTIST

John Peter Askew works with photography as his principal medium since 1994. He has exhibited as part of major international exhibitions, including Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles and the Prague Biennale, and at venues including The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Icon, Birmingham; the National Museum of Photography; Dilston Grove, London.  Askew was first trained as an economist at Manchester University. He studied sculpture (BA First Class) at Sunderland University before completing an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College.

John Peter Askew has written:

My first camera was a 21st birthday present from my father. A Pentax MX. Sometimes presents can be things that you don’t really like or want but I remember treasuring this. I remember taking some photos of the steep steps in Newcastle leading down to the quayside. At home, I made a picture of a floral patterned waste bin in a flowerbed. There was also one of my mum and dad in bed on Christmas morning. It didn’t come out quite right as the light got into the back of the camera and distorted the colours. That fascinated me. My father was drinking a cup of tea while my mother read from a book by Alison Uttley. My dad was half in and half out of the light.

PICTURE OF THE WEEK

IN CONVERSATION WITH SACHA CRADDOCK

Exhibition guide

UPSTAIRS

AUDIOGUIDE:

In the main room:

Ground floor

AUDIOGUIDE:

In the Libary:

 Peaches and Cherries 2007

1005 x 690mm, c-type photograph print, 2020

Windows and Leaves 1999

486 x 330mm, c-type photograph, 2020

In the hall:

Young Man preparing Meal 2008

1253 x 951mm, c-type photograph print in glazed wood frame 2019

Basement Gallery

AUDIOGUIDE

In this room:

WE, Photographs from Russia 1996-2017

Digital slideshow, 1500mm x 1000mm, 3 minutes 54 seconds, 2020