Intro

The Grand Prix Images Vevey 2017/2018 Jury selected Peter Puklus with the project “The Hero Mother – How to build a house”.

The Jury was unanimous in selecting Peter Puklus for the Grand Prix 2017/18, for a truly original and intriguing proposal that draws universal issues of family and the performance of parental roles into the artist’s unique and compelling visual language. Puklus offered a multifaceted dossier of texts, drawings and embryonic photographic sketches that begins to describe a completely new and unseen body of work by an artist whose recent photobook, The Epic Love Story of a Warrior, has drawn so much attention and excitement. It is therefore in the view of the jury, the perfect moment for Puklus to step onto the larger public stage that Vevey offers. Puklus’ new work is the result of a complex, immediate and accessible process. It begins from very simple and identifiable notions of assumed masculine and feminine roles in society: motherhood (as a presumed heroic activity) and the father’s inclination to build and protect the family home. For Puklus, the dynamics of these roles are deconstructed and questioned. Visually, the symbols associated with the roles are broken down into constituent parts as the basis for a playful investigation, expressed as sculptural and performative photographic works. The resulting images are exciting, challenging and fun, and maintain a resolute sense of the symbolic riddles of modern life. From the initial proposal to the finished project, the jury looks forward to seeing Puklus take his own unique lexicon of the clichés of family life beyond the confines of the studio and transform it into an inspiring and engaging installation.

Peter Puklus:

Trained at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris, Peter Puklus (1980) currently lives and works in Budapest, where he is completing a PhD in Photography at MOME. In his books as well as his exhibitions, Puklus likes to focus on the narrative. He also strives to chart new territories beyond the field of photography by resorting to sculpture, drawing and video art.

Grand Prix Images Vevey is a creation-support grant for photography projects. The award, worth some CHF 40,000 (approx. EUR 37,000), enables artists to develop an original project. The winner now has one year to complete the project which will premiere at the next Festival Images Vevey from 8 to 30 September 2018.