Thom Puckey (1948), born in Bexleyheath, England, currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Tuscany (Italy). Puckey studied fine art and experimental music in London before graduating with a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art in 1975. From 1973 to 1981, Puckey gained widespread recognition as a performance artist, as part of the duo Reindeer Werk, performing throughout Europe and North America, and participating in Documenta 5. Thom Puckey has exhibited worldwide at leading galleries, museums, and at art fairs, including solo’s at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Museo Centro Luigi Pecci (Prato, Italy). His work is included in numerous international museum and private collections, and his monumental public sculptures are prominently present in various cities across the Netherlands.
Thom Puckey moved during the last few years from figurative sculpture to the complexity of analogue photography, though his fundamental image-making concerns remain the same as they ever have been. Devoting now most of his time to the exciting and exacting studio and darkroom processes, he creates his photographic works in concentrated, risky and complicated ways. ‘What is to be photographed’ is no longer the real point in a whirlwind of analogue technicalities, multi-camera set-ups, real and projected imagery, long exposures, multi-exposures, mysteries of light and time as registered in real chemical changes on negative film. The female presence, a constant in his marble and bronze sculptures, takes on a new identity. She can appear dangerous, obscure, sacred, mythical, magical, otherworldly – through the unpredictable magic of his processes, Thom Puckey embeds her into deformations of renaissance paintings and dark Tuscan undergrowth. The images are born, grow, transmute and metamorphosise into large multi-layered works, often approaching the condition of painting. And sometimes they appear with an unexpected clarity, echoing the unnerving detailed quality of his earlier sculptures. He feels as yet no need for colour – the intensity of his monochrome brightnesses and darknesses is more than enough, as was the intensity of his white marble a few years ago.
Exhibitions at Galerie Nasty Alice: Let’s pretend it’s not the end of the world 2026 .
