Peter Peryer at NGV

Peter Peryer's photography Home (1991) is currently a part of the NGV's Confounding Contemporary Photography exhibition. At first glance Home is a photograph of a picturesque cottage surrounded by a simple garden. However it does not seem quite right. When you look at the photograph for a bit longer the scale becomes ambiguous, and the cottage begins to look less 'real'. It is actually a photograph of a tiny house in the model village of Bekonscot in Beaconsfield, England. It is a puzzling image that uses elements of the surreal to draw in an audience.

This photograph was accompanied by The Meccano Bus (1994). Again this image initially seems like an ordinary bus going up a hill, but after closer inspection, it is actually a toy bus sitting in what could possibly be a crevice in a rock. Peryer again uses the surreal to draw in an audience and then question their perception of what is 'real'.

Peter Peryer. The Meccano Bus, 1994