Steve Pratt: DAMAGE(d)

Steve Pratt is a British artist now based in Finland. His exhibition DAMAGE(d) depicts the feelings that have been evoked by the post trauma of military service. These emotions dominated the artists’s sense of self during an extended period in his life – a period that culminated with school shootings at Jokela (2007) and Kauhajoki (2008).

In his recent works Steve Pratt deals with the public and private effects of institutionalized violence, the potential for violence that is everywhere in contemporary life and the potential for violence within the social and political structures. After the tragic events at two Finnish schools the artist felt compelled in his own work to express how it feels to be in the position of the perpetrator. In preventing violence Steve Pratt states that we need to have a more public awareness that the negative mental mindset is not necessarily a mental illness to be treated by anti-depressant drugs but in most cases, simply a negative perception that can be identified and changed with care and attention to the detail. Pratt himself has worked with these themes in workshops he has held for young people and former soldiers suffering from postr trauma.

Steve Pratt moved to Korpikylä in Northern Finland in 2000 to gain a safe distance to his past in the military service. He started by examining and painting the Finnish landscape. Accrding to Pratt, the landscape paintings were “a search for a safe place”, but when Jokela occurred, he felt he had to re-engage with the questionsa bout why suche terrible events take place. Pratt works on themed series of paintings to expose the hidden realities of conflict. Military Conflict (1987–) present paintings which offer a dark, tumultuous insight into the terror of war. Victims (2009–) are paintings that vividly represent the hidden realities of war such as the death of innocent children and civilians as well as the ordinary soldier on both sides of the conflict Conflicts of Place (2005–) expose the politicization of space and place to reveal how we mythologise the connections between persona and place. Steve Pratt’s paintings and collages are big in size and three-dimensional. He has experimented a lot with materials and has most recently used different earth materials together with high-tech binding materials.

Steve Pratt was born in Skipton, North Yorkshire in 1949. He attended private preparatory school education. When his parents divorced and the funds to keep him at school dried up he was taken to the Army Recruitment office to sign up as a Junior Leader aged 14 and a half. Pratt served in the Special Air Service from 1969–81. 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. Steve Pratt has held exhibitions in Finland, Sweden, Germany and Great Britain.