Peckham Space: Celebrating SE15
If you ask the average person, Peckham isn’t an area instantly synonymous with art, but secretly the once-notorious crime spot has been garnering a pretty solid reputation amongst those who know about the ‘underground scene’ -and I’m not just talking about the ‘underexposed’ exhibition that had portraits of black actors all along the wall of Peckham Hill Street. There are several galleries throughout Peckham, showcasing photography, installations and the like, but one of the newest is Peckham Space, a ‘purpose-built public gallery dedicated to commissioning artworks made in partnership with community groups’ which starts an interesting new exhibition, showcasing art that has a connection to the Peckham area, today.
The exhibition is called ‘The Open 2011′ and as the name suggests is open to all local artists, encouraging them to submit work that celebrates the area to a panel of judges in the hope that it is chosen to be shown during the event, which runs until December 17th. The concept is a brilliant one and strikes an even deeper chord with me because Peckham Space is part of Camberwell College of the Arts which in turn is part of The University of the Arts, London – which is my alma mater. Coincidentally, one of the great artists featured in the show is Sarah Peace, herself an ex-UAL student, having studied sculpture for a time at Central Saint Martins, I caught up with her to find out a bit more.
“Open 2011 is basically an open call where they wanted works related to the area that talked about the culture of Peckham” says the 24-year old south London based artist, ‘and my piece (seen at the top of this post) is an abstract representation of collaboration, called ‘Fruitful Harmony’ that shows food items from different cultures found in Peckham, bought together to create an underwater landscape.”
The exciting piece continues Sarah’s love of using food items to create art, her ‘Lines’ work used Spaghetti to create images and her ‘Chicks‘ collection used Chicken (you can check out both here) to create pieces of art that had very little to do with food, in fact if you took the pictures at face value you would be hard pressed to recognise what the medium used to create them was. Sarah has also been involved with some other big projects including one where artists decorated life-size lions and placed them around Bournemouth just like the Elephants which where all over London last summer.
When I ask what made her determined to become an artist, Sarah says, “It’s not easy to make a living out of art but if you really love it you have to make it easy. I’ve decided not to be put off by that side of things and I compensate for the gaps when commissions aren’t coming thick and fast by taking photos and making portfolios for people. I also do graphic design and web design.” Sarah cites Sam Taylor-Wood as a big inspiration for her own art, and says she loves all her work, even the silent films she made as a student.
For herself, Sarah hopes to be curating shows and making her work accessible to everyone, “In the future I hope to be selling prints of my work and for it to be available on things like greetings cards” she says. Right now, apart from the exhibition, Sarah’s main focus is a film project, “I’m working on a stop-animation project called Dead Pretty at the moment and I’m working hard to get it finished by the end of the year” she says. With so many strings to her creative bow, Sarah Peace is definitely an artist that Peppergrain can co-sign and make sure you keep reading to find out more about the amazing things she has in store.
You can see Fruitful Harmony and other fantastic works at Peckham Space,89 Peckham High Street London SE15 5RS, from today until the 17th December and check out Sarah’s work here or follow her on twitter, here.
Monica Rahman
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