Renewal

Exhibited as part of 'Time Amongst Pictures, Bruno's Dream and Other Stories - Oliver Hoffmeister and Kevin Petrie' at Northern Print from 21 January - 7 March, 2026.

In this exhibition, Kevin Petrie presents new work developed from working at Northern Print over the last year and half. Kevin has worked with printmaking in various ways for over thirty-five years and is especially known for his artwork and books on ceramics, glass and print. In recent years, he has focused more on painting and drawing and lately returned to printmaking on paper. Attending Northern Print workshops and receiving technical support has been central to Kevin’s re-engagement with etching and recent explorations of dry point and carborundum printing. The results of which are shown this exhibition.

Much of the work has emerged from Kevin’s interest in the writing and thought of Dame Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) and his engagement with the Murdoch research community. Murdoch is known for her twenty-six novels and three books on philosophy. Her novels deal with good and evil, sexual relationships, morality and the power of the unconscious. Murdoch’s work also promoted ‘unselfing’ and escaping the ‘fat relentless ego’. Linked to this is the idea of ‘paying attention’ to other people and nature. We might think of this as mindfulness or seeking ‘presence’ today.

From reading the novels Kevin began to make pieces that reflected key scenes or overarching themes. He says: ‘In these cases, a striking image comes to my mind when reading and I have attempted to depict it. Images encountered in the books, combined with other themes or ideas, have helped unlock my imagination and enabled me to make far more unexpected art’.

Kevin Petrie is Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Sunderland. He studied a BA (Hons) Illustration at the University of Westminster, Harrow, where he first discovered printing onto ceramics and began exploring ideas of decoration through applying drawn images to ceramic objects. This led him to complete an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, London. There, he explored glass and combined printed drawings with glass sculpture in a series of self-portrait heads. These investigations developed into a practice-based PhD in ceramics and printmaking at the Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol. Through this research, he helped to develop and refine a patented water-based method of screenprinting onto ceramics.

Kevin completed his PhD in 1999 and began his academic career at the turn of the millennium at the University of Sunderland. He taught in the Glass and Ceramics department and was Programme Leader for the MA in Glass and Ceramics for nine years, before later becoming Head of the School of Art and Design for six years. He has also supervised and examined many practice-based PhDs, including several in printmaking. Kevin is known for his books Glass and Print (2006), Ceramic Transfer Printing (2011) and The Ceramics Reader (2017), and has written extensively on glass, ceramics and print in key journals, including Printmaking Today. His artwork is held in a number of collections, including the National Museum of Scotland, and he has been invited to teach and lecture in Germany, Denmark, Australia, Thailand, Canada and China.

In recent years, Kevin has returned to painting and drawing, and more recently to printmaking. His work has been inspired by the novels and philosophy of Dame Iris Murdoch. He first exhibited this body of work in his 2023 solo exhibition Other Journeys at Gateshead Library, which led to an invitation to design the cover of and write for The Iris Murdoch Review, as well as to participate in The Iris Murdoch Podcast series. In 2024, he presented his work at the Eleventh International Iris Murdoch Conference at the University of Chichester and held a solo exhibition at the Iris Murdoch Archives titled Web of Life – New Prints by Kevin Petrie.

Petrie’s work will feature in two forthcoming books on Murdoch by Chinese scholar Professor He Weiwen: her monograph Arts and Morals: Iris Murdoch’s Fictional World and her translation of Iris Murdoch: A Life. The Flemish literary journal Deus Ex Machina has published Petrie’s drawings in its recent ‘Murdoch’ issue. Several of his prints and a painting are now held in the Kingston University Archives and Special Collections. In 2024, Printmaking Today featured a profile on Kevin and his recent work.