Richard Proffitt tells John P O’Sullivan how a visit to a Peter Blake exhibition as a teenager encouraged him on his career path
During his teenage years Richard Proffitt liked to spend weekends camping at sites in the UK linked to pagan religious practices and associated with mystical experiences. The Nine Ladies, a Bronze Age stone circle in the Peak District, and Long Meg, a Neolithic monolith in Cumbria, were favoured locations. He saw these places as portals to a reality that exists behind the painted veil of our pragmatic, preposterous, consumption-driven world. His sojourns there helped to confirm and enhance his sense of wonder at our very existence and at our insignificance in the vastness of the universe. His subsequent career as an artist has been devoted to creating an immersive environment (via installation, painting, sound, video and sculpture) in which his audience can share this wonder. We should emerge from his shows questioning, like Boyle and Joxer in Juno and the Paycock: ‘What is the stars?’
Isabella Evangelisti visits the MAC in Belfast, where the work of selected painting graduates from Belfast School of Art is on show
