Contemporary artist; Steve Pratt BA

Steve Pratt was born in 1949 in the north of England. He attended a number of strict boarding schools before being enlisted into the army as a Junior Leader at the age of 14 ½ years.

Steve still finds it difficult to reconcile with his 17 years military career – as a period of “service to a false ideology”. This is reflected in his ‘Military Conflict Paintings and Objects’ of the nineties, and his more recent engagement as series of works entitled; Military Conflict (1992 – ongoing); Conflicts of Place (2005 ongoing); Victims (2009 ongoing).

Steve obtained a purchase discharge from the army in 1981. At his final medical he was told “I’ll give you a year before you try to kill yourself”.

“For more years than I care to remember that statement hung over me like a death sentence and when the Hungerford shooting occurred in 1987, I thought I was heading for the same outcome – simply on the basis of my background of training to use a weapon in a variety of questionable anti terrorist situations combined with a lack of understanding about the normality of everyday life situations made for a very angry individual. For a long time I thought I was some kind of ‘dangerous individual’ waiting to implode.”




Steve Pratt first began to study art through various adult education institutes in Leeds in the mid 1980’s. In 1996 he graduated from the University of Leeds with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art. He was awarded the Alun Mohun Memorial Prize for painting.

After a short foray into the ‘art scene’ in the UK, the artist relocated to northern Finland. The move to Finland was an attempt to place some distance between the public and private effects of being a former SAS soldier (1969-1981) with the need to rediscover and assign meaning to certain violent events of past and present.

For Steve, the Jokela school shooting in Finland in November 2007 was a massive wakeup call that the problem of murder suicide is now in society and that we must try and unlock these models of violent behaviour so that we are better equipped to demystify their causes and thus help to prevent those models from taking hold.

In 2010 the artist was invited by the charity Talking2Minds to attend NLP Practitioner training in Cardiff (see Writings Feb 2010)

“It’s fair to say that this course completely changed my attitude to life – it was the best thing I ever did – in the sense that it enabled me get out of the hole I had dug for myself of living in my past.

It will be interesting to see how the art works develop from here without the inevitable tug of subjectivity.”


www.steveprattfineart.com

stephen.pratt@pp.inet.fi

00358 (0)40 740 5984
Steve Pratt

Curriculum Vitae

 

 

STEVE PRATT – ARTIST /WRITER/PERFORMER

Mustajärventie 11

95540 Korpikylä

FINLAND

 

stephen.pratt@pp.inet.fi

Gsm: 00358 (0)40 740 5984

 

Born: Skipton, England; 22:01:1949

 

British expatriate artist, living and working in northern Finland.

 

www.steveprattfineart.com

 

Forthcoming:

Gallery Elm75, Berlin, Germany; October (9th - 31st October 2010)

Global Peace and Unity exhibition; EXCEL, London (24/25th October 2010)

 Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova; Turku, Finland; Nov 12th 2010 – Jan 30th 2011

City of Salisbury Galleries, UK (February 2011 projected date) 

Education

1988-1992 BA (hons) Fine Art, University of Leeds

1976 Army School of Languages, Beaconsfield; Arabic

Exhibitions (Painting)

2010 Blackall Studios, London; War & Body exhibition

2010 Galleria Napa, Rovaniemi, Finland; 'Deleting the Dangerous Individual'

2009 Culture Centre, Kemijarvi, Finland ‘Conflicts of Place’

2008 Galleria Kellokas, Yllas, Finland, ‘Social and Political Landscapes’

2008 Galleria Koivikko, 95540 Korpikylä, Finland, ‘About the Making of a Dangerous Individual’ (2007/8)

2008 Tornio Culture Week

2008 Galleria Regina, Turku, Finland ‘About the Making of a Dangerous Individual’ (2007/8 paintings)

2008 (January) Tornio City Council, Finland –‘Social and Political Landscape’ (2007 paintings)

2008 Galleria Rantakasarmi, Fortress of Finland, Helsinki - Artist Association of Lapland

2007 Galleria Koivikko, Finland – New Painting and Work in Progress at the artist’s studio and Gallery – summer exhibition

2007 Tornio City Council (2006 paintings)

2006 The Finnish Forest Paintings, Galleria Koivikko, 95540 Korpikylä, Finland

2006 ‘Points of View’, Group exhibition, Galleria Napa Rovaniemi,

2006 ‘Hallaa’, Lapland Artists Exhibition, Utsjoki

2006 Lapland Arts Project - photographic reconnaissance of environment art sites in Lapland (Sodankylä to Utsjoki)

2005-2006 Renovation project to create an art gallery space in an outbuilding at the artist’s home

2002 Started ART AND COMMUNICATIONS STEPHEN PRATT (Y-1703513-8)

1994-2000 Community environment art projects, Central Highlands, Scotland

1994 Victoria Miro, London

1992 Leeds Art Space, Leeds

1992 Degree exhibition, Bradford Woollen Mills

1992 Fresh Art, Paintings and Objects, London

1987 ‘This Is It’, Poetry and Performance, University Theatre, Leeds

 

Writing projects

2010 Picture Theory for Arches magazine

2010 ‘A War of Perceptions’, Talking2Minds NLP Course report (unpublished)

2009 ‘About the Making of a Dangerous Individual’ 30 minute monologue performance text

2009 ‘About the Making of a Dangerous Individual’ 10,000 word narrative text for an art catalogue/book

2009 ‘Impossibility of the Word’ Critical theory for John Court

2008 ‘Events I Have Come to Frequent’ Part 1 – Suicide – (unpublished)

2008 ‘A Normal Average Boy’ short story (unpublished)

2000- ‘Why Did You Here;’ A memoir of short stories (unpublished).

2007- Philosophical theory (ongoing)

2007 ‘Mirroring Dyslexia’ essay for John Court, Drawings 2006-2007

2007 ‘On Being Safe’ A short story for Parnasso 10.2007

2006 ‘IKEA Comes North’ for Guardian Abroad

2006 ‘Coming to Finland’ for Guardian Abroad

2006 ‘Letter from Upper Lapland’ for the Guardian Weekly.

2006 Neo liberalism and the Depersonalisation of Real People; (translated into Finnish) for Pohjolan Sanomat

2004-2005 Korpikyla.com, English teacher’s web log (discontinued)

3:2004 ‘Muutoksia Korpikylässä’, A short story published in Parnasso magazine

2000-2006 ‘Mission of Madness’, a memoir (unpublished).

2003 - 2004; 24 Short stories, published weekly (in English) in Lounais Lappi (a free local newspaper)

2002 ‘Talvisota aina mielessäni’, a Poem for Finnish Independence Day (unpublished)

1992 This is it, Poetry and Performance, University Theatre, Leeds

1990 Arvon Foundation poetry writing workshop

1989 Arvon Foundation writer’s workshop

1981- 1990 Poetry published in magazines and periodicals such as; Country Life, Mars and Minerva, The Yorkshire Post, Poetry Review

 Workshops

2010 Leigh, Lancashire, UK, for Talking2Minds, Change Programme

2010 Galleria Napa, Rovaniemi, Finland

2010 Leipatehdas Activity Centre, Kemi, Finland (5 days Creative Solutions workshop for Immigrants and Refugees)

Performances

2009 ‘The Making of a Dangerous Individual’ monologue performance for Disengagement Amongst Youth, a conference on Radicalization, Extremism, and Organised crime; Fryshuset, Stockholm, Sweden

2009 ‘The Making of a Dangerous Individual’ monologue performance, for Violence and Network Society conference, University of Helsinki, Finland

2009 ‘About the Making of a Dangerous Individual’ monologue – private performance, for Oulu Theatre, Finland

2009 ‘Deconstructing the Myth’ Video performance for Camtasia presentation www.steveprattfineart.com

 

Lectures and interviews

2010 Interview with Carl Arrendell for Islam Channel TV, London

2010 Interview for The Sun newspaper, Cardiff

2009 ‘Art as a means of Understanding and Dealing with Physical and Mental Trauma’, Seminar, Jyväskylä Art Museum, Finland

2008 Interview for Priima YLE TV1

2008 ‘About the Making of the Dangerous Individual’ Art Academy Turku, Finland

2007 Jonni Roos interview for YLE (Helsinki)

2007 Juhana Rossi interview for Helsinki Sanomat

 

Awards and Bursaries

2010 Lapin Taidetoimikunta (Art Council of Lapland)

2009 Finnish Cultural Foundation (Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Lapin rahasto)

2008 Artist’s residency, Berlin

2008 Working Grant, Arts Council of Lapland

2000 The Hunter Blair Award, Edinburgh

1996 Artists Travel Bursary to Berlin

1992 Alun Mohun memorial prize for Fine Art, University of Leeds

1980 British Empire Medal

1979 Mentioned in Despatches

 

Societies:

2006 Lapland Artists Association

2006 Finnish Painter’s Union

 

Employment history

 

Service in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, North and South America, Canada

 

www.steveprattfineart.com

 

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