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Born in London in 1963, Robert Pepperell studied at the Slade School of Art, leaving in 1988. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s he exhibited numerous innovative electronic works, including at Ars Electronica, the Barbican Gallery, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, the ICA, and the Millennium Dome. He has also published several influential books, including The Posthuman Condition (1995 and 2003) and The Postdigital Membrane (with Michael Punt, 2000), as well as many articles, reviews and papers. He is currently Reader in Fine Art and Head of Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art & Design.

Central to his work is an investigation of the nature of perceptual consciousness, carried out through both philosophical inquiry and the practice of painting and drawing — topics on which he lectures internationally.

Pepperell’s paintings and drawings are the result of intensive experimentation in materials and methods designed to evoke a very specific, though elusive, state of mind. The works induce a disrupted perceptual condition in which what we see cannot be matched with what we know. Instead of a recognisable depiction the viewer is presented with — what the art historian Dario Gamboni has called — a ‘potential image’, that is, a complex multiplicity of possible images, none of which ever finally resolves.

Engaging in an ongoing dialogue with art of the past, particularly the Baroque and early Cubism, the works on canvas, panel and paper weave a complex web of impossible and contradictory passages suggesting erotic or heroic dramas with both bestial and transcendent overtones. The images, when seen in real life, are compelling and often disturbing despite the traditional aesthetic framework they occupy.

Included here are samples of recent work. Click on the thumbnails to open a larger image. The image will open in a new window. (Note: Some pop-up suppressors will need to be turned off)

He is represented in Spain by the Fusion Gallery

Paradox 1, 2005,
Oil on panel, 46cm x 60cm

Click for Monochrome Series 2005

St Jerome, 2005,
Chalk on paper, 42cm x 59cm


The Spies, 2005,
Chalk on paper,42cm x 59cm


The Seminary, 2002,
Graphite on paper, 42cm x 53cm


Exodus, 2002,
Chalk on paper, 42cm x 53cm


Taken, 2005,
Chalk on paper, 42cm x 59cm