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Through the Peckham Glass
10 December 2011 - 6 January 2012 This exhibition has its own dedicated website: www.peckhamglass.co.uk As part of Southwark Council’s Love to Shop Southwark campaign, Peckham Space presents Through the Peckham Glass, a dispersed exhibition of specially commissioned artworks displayed in and inspired by their unique locations: the shop windows of Peckham. Five artists have each developed a new work which interacts with and reflects the context of its unusual display space. Through the Peckham Glass,requires the viewer to literally look through the glass windows of Peckham businesses. However the artists have also interpreted the exhibition title and its referencing of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass more metaphorically, drawing on the book’s themes of mirrors, reflections and reversals of time and space, and have interweaved these ideas with contemporary Peckham. Love to Shop Southwark is an initiative from Southwark Council encouraging residents to shop locally within the borough in the run up to Christmas. Many local businesses were badly affected by the riots in the summer, and Love to Shop Southwark encourages residents to do their bit to support local traders to help them get back on their feet. Through the Peckham Glass will draw positive attention and new audiences to local businesses as part of this campaign. Scroll down to find out more about each of the five artists' artworks, and follow the link on the left see the free public events associated with this exhibition. --------------------------------- Paul Gallagher’s collages question the mainstream media’s portrayal of beauty. He is working in the display space of Café Como, a pairing which may at first seem incongruous, but Paul’s subversion of aspiration will be heightened by the everyday nature of this location. His collages are largely figurative, but the subjects are broken down into abstracted geometric compositions. Paul lives and works in London. He graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2011, and is currently working predominantly in collage, exploring beauty and identity. --------------------------------- Rachael House is an artist who makes events and objects. Her Pet-Tastic events, fancy dress picnics for dogs, started in Peckham Square and have since travelled far and wide, including to Blackpool, rural Norway and the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea. In 2009 she was commissioned by Peckham Space to make Peckham Peacocks, a mobility scooter meet in Peckham Square. --------------------------------- Having recently moved to London, Matthew McGuinness (originally from Brooklyn, New York) has shown widely on both sides of the Atlantic. A chef as well as an artist, his kitchen is a source of inspiration and a studio. He recently had a solo show, Who Does Not Work, Does Not Love, at Bearspace gallery in Deptford. The kitchen and the shared experience of cooking and eating is the starting point for Matthew’s practice. He will use the windows of Persepolis Iranian delicatessen to create an installation inspired by the sharing of recipes and diverse culinary cultures of Peckham. Creating recipes drawing on the ingredients sold within, his artwork will be both visually striking and an actual recipe that can be followed. --------------------------------- John Ryan’s installation in the expansive windows of the Peckham Pulse Café will give the viewer a simultaneous view of Peckham life inside and outside. His partially mirrored screens will serve to unite rather than divide the interior and exterior, becoming as much something to look through as at. John creates large scale installations that sit somewhere between painting and sculpture. He is also a 2011 graduate of Camberwell College of Arts. --------------------------------- Adam Walker, who also curates, creates a work at Whitten Timber which functions as much as a memorial as a sculpture. The work commemorates the old Grand Surrey Canal which once terminated in Peckham before being filled in from the 1940s onwards. The Whitten Timber family business once transported much of their stock on the old canal, which passed right behind their present site. The work will reference the connection between the former canal and Whitten, and draw connections between the onward progression of time and the steady forward flow of water. Adam’s work tends to fall into the space between painting and sculpture and is focussed on ideas of boundaries and containment, how the notional ‘edge’ of the artwork can be either challenged or emphasised. Many of his works create a feel of aftermath, giving the viewer the sense of having arrived just after a visceral performative act has taken place. |
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