Peter Kardia died at his home in Dorset, England on Friday 3rd May 2019.
Those who knew him will always remember him: his natural authority and self-confidence made him a powerful figure to his students, his colleagues, his friends and anyone who had the temerity to stand in his way. He was renowned as a teacher who brought a very different pedagogy into art education from the 1960s onwards with his innovative courses, particularly at St Martin’s and The Royal College of Art in London.
As a founder of the celebrated ‘A Course’ at the St Martin’s Sculpture Department in 1969, he was part of a small team whose teaching was unorthodox and controversial, including ‘The Locked Room’ projects which were featured in the influential 1973 BBC Omnibus documentary ‘A Question of Feeling’. Peter’s career as a teacher was also marked by the exhibition ‘From Floor to Sky’ which he curated in 2010 at the Ambika P3 gallery in London and featured works by 28 artists who had been his students at St Martin’s and the RCA.
I first met Peter Atkins, as he was known then, in 1970 at the bolted door of that ‘Locked Room’ in St Martins where I was a sculpture student starting on what became known as the ‘A Course’. There was no talking in the ‘Locked Room’ so the normal verbal exchanges between student and teacher were replaced by the one’s physical activity and the other’s observation. Later, in occasional project collaboration at St Martin’s and the Manydeed Group, I came to know him better but he remained as inscrutable as ever.
On one occasion Peter was exhibiting some large paintings in the main hall of St Martin's and needed to re-stretch the canvases that had been rolled up for storage. It was clearly a task that did not come naturally to him and I started to help. He quickly realised that I would do this more efficiently alone and, with a rare chuckle, threw down his stapler, turned on his heel and left me to it. He had a way of ‘turning on his heel’ that was very individual and included a particularly dismissive flourish as he turned his head away to make permanent his dismissal of the scene. It wasn’t meant as a theatrical gesture, it was a punctuation mark in his conscious involvement.
Those of us who were his students were struck by Peter’s extraordinarily serious approach to his work and his acute perception of creative behaviour. Very few could match his professional and intellectual stature: for us he was an unforgettable presence.
John Burke
Those who knew him will always remember him: his natural authority and self-confidence made him a powerful figure to his students, his colleagues, his friends and anyone who had the temerity to stand in his way. He was renowned as a teacher who brought a very different pedagogy into art education from the 1960s onwards with his innovative courses, particularly at St Martin’s and The Royal College of Art in London.
As a founder of the celebrated ‘A Course’ at the St Martin’s Sculpture Department in 1969, he was part of a small team whose teaching was unorthodox and controversial, including ‘The Locked Room’ projects which were featured in the influential 1973 BBC Omnibus documentary ‘A Question of Feeling’. Peter’s career as a teacher was also marked by the exhibition ‘From Floor to Sky’ which he curated in 2010 at the Ambika P3 gallery in London and featured works by 28 artists who had been his students at St Martin’s and the RCA.
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| Gareth Jones, Garth Evans, Peter Kardia at the symposium The A Course: an Inquiry (2010) |
I first met Peter Atkins, as he was known then, in 1970 at the bolted door of that ‘Locked Room’ in St Martins where I was a sculpture student starting on what became known as the ‘A Course’. There was no talking in the ‘Locked Room’ so the normal verbal exchanges between student and teacher were replaced by the one’s physical activity and the other’s observation. Later, in occasional project collaboration at St Martin’s and the Manydeed Group, I came to know him better but he remained as inscrutable as ever.
On one occasion Peter was exhibiting some large paintings in the main hall of St Martin's and needed to re-stretch the canvases that had been rolled up for storage. It was clearly a task that did not come naturally to him and I started to help. He quickly realised that I would do this more efficiently alone and, with a rare chuckle, threw down his stapler, turned on his heel and left me to it. He had a way of ‘turning on his heel’ that was very individual and included a particularly dismissive flourish as he turned his head away to make permanent his dismissal of the scene. It wasn’t meant as a theatrical gesture, it was a punctuation mark in his conscious involvement.
Those of us who were his students were struck by Peter’s extraordinarily serious approach to his work and his acute perception of creative behaviour. Very few could match his professional and intellectual stature: for us he was an unforgettable presence.
John Burke
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