Peter Neill

Dollar Gun

Peter Neill is a visual artist living and working in Northern Ireland. Since 1977, he has exhibited his work widely both at home and abroad. Until 2016, he was the course director of the BA Photography course at the University of Ulster. His works are in a number of collections, such as this piece which is one of a series held by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The series investigates how our interpretation of photographs can be so closely linked to our collective semiology that it is sometimes impossible to truthfully read an image.

Neil states “As an artist living through the troubles in Ireland, the gun image has been prevalent in different forms in my culture and experience throughout my life, from the innocent playthings of childhood to the potential violence of contemporary society. The image of the gun is so potent today that we have an almost universal response to the simple object, which is beyond our control-it hides in plain sight”.