HULALA “For all the days I see you and all the days I don’t” A first glimpse of a new body of work made over the last four years on the Isle of Skye in Scotland whilst living and working in a Crofting Township and building a natural straw bale house with the help…

In 2022 I was on the cusp of turning 50, my son had turned 18 and left school, and my long-term relationship ended. I was free to make choices based on my own desires. I found myself facing one of those rare opportunities when you can choose to completely change the direction of your life. …

  At Fotografia Europea 2025, working alongside Luce Lebart, Petersen created her third major constellation piece Raves and Riots Constellation, in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The room also featured vitrines of original diaries with audible transcripts, her seating piece Come Sit Down –originally shown at V&A Scotland, and her collaborative film 23 Teknivals.      

  TIMELINE OF A RAVER Currently this piece is touring with the Goethe Institute in the Techno Worlds exhibition. Having been around Europe, South America and North America during 2022-24, the show is currently touring Asia for 2025.                                

  Installation shots by Tom Carter

In early 2022 the Arts Council Collection acquired a series of 12 photographs from the Vinca Petersen Archive.

River Conversation in the National Portrait Gallery collection.  

A ‘Life of Subversive Joy’ and ‘Come (Sit) Down’ installations at the V&A Dundee. Open now until January 2022. Close ups of the seats for the seating installation ‘Come (Sit) Down’ also at the V&A Dundee. This piece is a re-imagination of the large bed/bench at Sweet Harmony (Saatchi 2019). Due to covid restrictions the…

  An exhibition of photographs from the ‘Raves And Riots’ series. 3rd June – 30th July 2021.   Click here for a conversation between Vinca and Francesca Gavin for the Edel Assanti ‘Home Fires’ series.

  A Life of Subversive Joy – A 23m long installation using 600 photos and 200 pieces of ephemera to tell the story of Petersen’s life of raving, roaming and humanitarian projects. Installation first shown at Saatchi 2019, due to be shown at V&A Dundee 2020/21.       A highlight of ‘Sweet Harmony: Rave…

Photographs of the book, No System
(Steidl, 1999).

  A highlight of ‘Sweet Harmony: Rave | Today’ is Vinca Petersen’s ‘A Life of Subversive Joy’: a great jostling timeline of dates, personal photographs and flyers alongside details of raves she ran and attended scrawled directly on to the gallery wall (‘1st August. Arrived at rave in Plumpton at 7am. Lost it on “blue…

“Seaside Photographed” at Turner Contemporary, 2019.   Raver Car   Dungeness Rave   Norfolk Sleep

The Martin Parr Foundation is now the permanent home to the working books and colour prints used in the making of No System (Steidl, 1999). Link to Martin Parr Foundation/Vinca Petersen Archive    

      Vinca Petersen interviewed by Sheryl Garratt – Future Fantasy (Ditto 2017) This book uses material from the very start of my archive, a small collection of about 100 photographs I’d kept from my teens and early 20s, along with my diaries. I started taking photos when I was very young: my dad…

  Deuce and a Quarter (Idea, 2018) In 1999, Corinne Day was paid to do a road trip in Texas. She spent most of her budget on a car, the rest on our flights, and four of us all piled into this car and just drove from Houston down to Austin. We followed the Llano…

Photos of Roma, and other Romanians, and their horses, taken from the FYP bus.

Dazed curated projection – Prince Charles Club, Berlin. (To see Dazed article & film of slideshow follow this link…)  

TO BOOK A DrJOY / ArtNurse+ CLINIC IN YOUR AREA CONTACT US VIA CONTACT FORM DoctorJoy+ and the Emergency. I am responding to an emergency, not only within myself but within our culture and society as a whole. WHEN DID JOY BECOME SUBVERSIVE? We have been stripped of so much of our joyousness and the…

Link to the FYP website containing all Petersen’s FYP photographic galleries & information.

A journey across West Africa taking a bouncy castle as a form of Laughter Aid.

Raves & Riots 1990-2004 – Description required

The first journey to Ukraine with volunteers and two 7.5 ton lorries full of aid…