This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition by Peter Halley, 'Conduits: Paintings from the 1980s' held at the MUDAM between March 31 and October 15, 2023.

Assembling thirty key works from public and private collections, this retrospective survey presents paintings alongside previously unseen drawings, sketches and notes from the first decade of Peter Halley’s career.

During the 1980s Peter Halley developed a signature vocabulary that he has used in his work now for over forty years. Redeploying the language of geometric abstraction, he developed a pictorial system of ‘prisons’, ‘cells’ and ‘conduits’ that enabled him to produce diagrammatic paintings representing social subjects. With these works he addressed the impact and legacies of urbanisation and industrialisation within a post-industrial society marked by technological change.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue reproducing Halley’s paintings alongside kodaliths, drawings, studies, notes and texts. Published by Mudam and Hatje Cantz, this extensive monograph includes three new essays by Tim Griffin, Paul Pieroni and the exhibition’s curator, Michelle Cotton. It also features a 35-page, expanded interview with the artist compiled from various published and unpublished conversations recorded between 1985 and 2021. Interlocutors include Juan Bolivar, Dan Cameron, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Trevor Fairbrother, Kathryn Hixson, Annette Leddy, Tom McGlynn, Giancarlo Politi and Helena Kontova, Jeanne Siegel and Jim Walrod.