Peter Martin
      
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We See Ourselves We See Each Other

"Both Peter Martin and Natalie Finnemore engineer glitches in the neoliberal matrix too. Yet both artists, in their very different practices, demonstrate an acute awareness that we can but poke and, however much we try, capitalist realism prevails. In Martin’s We See Ourselves, We See Eachother (2015/17) a series of archive images — analogue family photographs depicting holidays, weddings and other such get-togethers — are presented as a video slideshow. Alongside a soundtrack of one-note keyboard tones, a man in the clear style of a television announcer — American accent — provides commentary ‘She worked for many years’, ‘Anything is better than this’. Very discreetly we also hear background interference, as if the video has picked up a radio signal. The artist’s point is that we are inextricably intertwined with the systems of capital that play on our collective and individual aspirations and fears. A new work for Everything Flows involves a PA system — one of the early methods of retail marketing — that is co-opted by local young people. How much their commentary will escape these mechanisms of capital remains to be seen however." extract from Oliver Brasciano, A Day Spent Building Dams, 2016