92 framed drawings in pen and ink on paper, sometimes with additional colour in gouache and ink. Peter Greenaway – prime creator, fine artist, curator, writer, film-maker. His trademark or mannerisms are lists, documentary narration, bilateral symmetry and colour symbolism. Born in 1942 in Newport, Wales, Greenaway trained as a painter. He began as a film editor, working on British Government public information films, which lasted for 11 years. It was doubtless here that Greenaway acquired a taste for the somewhat surreal yet always deadpan documentary narration that characterizes some of his films. Between this time and the release of his breakthrough feature film The Draughtsman Contract (1982), Greenaway made 18 films of varying length, many of which display an obsessive exploration of the absurdities of bureaucracies and interrogation of the documentary form.
Greenaway is author of a number of unpublished novels. He has also remained active as a fine artist since 1988, producing and showing paintings and drawings in locations as far apart as Liege, Melbourne, Bremen and Tokyo. A substantial amount of his time is spent in curatorial activities – The Physical Self 1991, Rotterdam, 100 Objects to Represent the World 1992, Vienna, Flying out of this world 1992, The Louvre, Watching Water 1993, Venice Biennale. The Tulse Luper Project is a massive undertaking involving films for cinema, and television pro-grams, whose material will be embellished and interconnected by means of companion CD Roms and an internet site that will permit audiences to explore a volume of information far in excess of that which could be sensibly conveyed by traditional means. The atomic number of Uranium is 92, the number that consequently governs the number of major characters and events in the project, and particularly the number of suitcases that are discovered all over the world between 1921-2005. The contents, when investigated, explain, elucidate and make comment on the life and times of Tulse Luper.
Tulse Luper is Peter Greenaway’s alter ego, invented for himself in his teenage years and a character who has appeared in earlier films.