In Focus: ‘Burn Hole 1961 by Henk Peeters’ (2019)

The in-depth project ‘Burn Hole 1961 by Henk Peeters’ by Professor Michael White with a contribution from Dr Emma Richardson (Associate Professor of Materials and Metrology, University College London) and Carla Flack (Sculpture and Installation Art Conservator, Tate) was published in Tate’s ‘In Focus’ series on the Tate website in October 2019. 

It examines the artwork ‘far beyond’ the context of Henk Peeters’ role in the Dutch Nul art movement, of which Peeters (1925–2013) was a founding member in the 1960s:

 ‘It looks at its relationship the painterly abstraction of art informel, and at the interplay between abstraction and reality, materiality and immateriality, and authorship and its erasure in the work. Peeters’s use of PVC is discussed in line with its bodily associations – its connection to skin and to sensuality – while a new technical analysis of Burn Hole offers fresh insights into how Peeters made it and how it can be preserved for future display.’

Introduction, ‘Burn Hole 1961 by Henk Peeters’

The Burn Hole In Focus includes the following sections by Professor White: ‘Authenticity’, ‘Burn Hole’, ‘Materiality’, ‘Reality’ and ‘Tangibility’, with ‘Burning and Conserving PVC’ by Dr Richardson and Carla Flack.

The In Focus series editor is Christopher Griffin (Convenor, Research Programmes and Publications, Tate); the project editor is Celia White (Senior Research Editor, Tate); the digital editor is Susannah Worth (Digital Editor (Research), Tate); and the picture researcher was Arthur Goodwin (Assistant Research Editor, Tate).