Lesson 56- Wales

This artwork featured in BorderLands (2026).

Peter Finnemore’s Lesson 56-Wales was made in the months following the devolution referendum in 1997 that voted for the creation of the Welsh Assembly. The work is based on photographs of schoolbooks studied by the artist’s grandmother at her school in Carmarthenshire.

The books, published at the height of the British Empire, undermine the autonomy, language and culture of Wales, telling the story of the nation from an exclusively British perspective. Finnemore explains that the work represents “the state’s role in the colonisation of the mind and imagination through education, and the perpetuation of stereotypical assumptions and impotent mythologies”.

Image: Peter Finnemore, Lesson 56- Wales, Works on paper. Installation view, BorderLands, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Finn Beales.

 

 

About the artist

Peter Finnemore

Peter Finnemore exhibited in BorderLands (15 May – 31 August 2026).