Peter Gardiner’s studio is a living, breathing cabinet of curiosities. The detritus of an obsessive mind litters the floor and walls. In every corner, a gem shines from the patina of years spent in the room. Shelves overflow with worn notebooks, scattered drawings, paintings, history books lie open on any available surface. Implements of the artist's intention—battered brushes, twisted paint tubes and makeshift pallets—are scattered from one end to the other. Gardiner is the master of drawing order from that chaos. A red thread that binds his painting to the deeply reflective ideas and passions of his mind. 

The Indulgences is a powerful exhibition that draws from history; aesthetically and morally. Gardiner explores what it is to be on the edge, inspired by humanity’s eternal search for a sense of faith, and our perpetual ability to corrupt. The artist is engaged in conversation with historical narratives—constantly questioning what we purport to be the moral path forward. The uniqueness of his work lies in his ability to present ideas as one thing, whilst simultaneously revealing a beautifully subversive undercurrent.

The exhibition is predominantly centred around investigations into still life; a tradition born from the 17th Century Dutch Golden Age of painting—the trappings of influence and wealth manifested in evocative paintings that discreetly moralise. Gardiner digs deeper into the visual language used in the Northern Renaissance. The title of his exhibition points to the Ninety-five Theses penned by Martin Luther in 1517, and nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg; a seismic shift in the power of belief systems in the western world. Amongst other protestations by Luther was Pope Leo X’s sale of the Church’s papal indulgences for arms to rebuild St Peter's Basilica. Luther was incensed that, effectively, one could pay cash for God’s forgiveness of one’s mortal sins. Gardiner wryly parallels this in our contemporary (apparently rational) world, where we now clamour for offset carbon credits to forgive our sins to the planet. But do we really believe?  

There is a hypnotic strangeness to this exhibition—fleeting moments of aesthetic recognition: nods to Arcimboldo’s bizarre portraits, sitting within Ruisdael’s landscapes, the pervading tone informed by Bosch. Oblique references aside, the mind of the artist is always in play in his studio. As creation progressed, eponymous stoic figures began to walk his landscapes—the sum of all elements of nature wandering through the abstract environs of floating pollen. He is reminding us that the natural world is far more than a lovely view—it is omnipresent, all-pervasive to our existence. In the words of Luther: “For in the true nature of things, if we consider, every green tree is more glorious than if we were made of gold and silver”.

Gardiner’s exhibition is a visual thesis; powerful in its intent and beautiful in its meticulous rendering. It draws us to the inevitable conclusion that the fragility of the natural and human world is inextricably linked—a caution that we ignore at our peril. 

Ralph Hobbs
May 2024