Peckham Space to open new exhibition

by Ceri Williams

A sustainable new venue funded by Camberwell College and Southwark Council is scheduled to open at Peckham Space early summer.

A short walk from Camberwell College, the yet-to-be completed building, made out of recycled materials, is said to "establish Peckham Square as a major cultural hub in South London."

Sarah McLean, an assistant at Peckham Space said: “We are very excited.

"The new venue will provide a state-of-the-art exhibition and workshop space and we are looking forward to contributing to the existing visual arts route along Peckham Road that already includes the South London Gallery and Camberwell College galleries.”

Working with students

The venue will open this summer with a group show of internationally exhibited artists exploring Peckham with the involvement of its residents.

Each artist commissioned will work with students through tutorials and lectures and the initiative will also be offering six-month internships, starting this month.

Peckham Space, in south London, started its artistic program in 2008 and will launch the new building with an exhibition titled Commission 6, show-casing the work of Clegg and Guttmann, Ana Laura López de la Torre, FREEE and Southwark TV.

Clegg and Guttmann, who have worked together since 1980, will be showing their interactive sculpture Continuous Drawing/Exquisite Corpse.

Consisting of a revolving wooden column painted as a blackboard, allowing visitors to each draw a human silhouette, the layers are then rotated, exchanging sections of the drawings, thus forming and altering the identities and resulting in the ‘exquisite corpse’, a popular game usually played on paper.

Peckham life documented

Ana Laura López de la Torre is the current holder of Southwark studio residency and the South London Gallery, which is situated next to Camberwell College.

López will collaborate with residents of Peckham to produce two films that will be shown in Peckham Space documenting life in the area.

FREEE, an artist’s collective, are also inviting in local people to create an image of Peckham's future.

They will approach shops and companies nearby and ask them to envision their businesses in years to come.

They will then forge 'The Peckham Pledge': an act to symbolise the imagined future of Peckham, which the businesses can sign.

Particpation

These posters will be free to the public for the duration of the exhibition.

Southwark TV will also be participating, working with year 10 students from the Harris Academy, Peckham, to produce short films.

Students interested in applying for internships should contact Peckham Space by email.

Designed by architects Penson Group, the Peckham Space permanent venue will open in Peckham Square on Saturday, June 12, 2010.

Peckham Space is an arts initiative developed by Camberwell College of Arts and funded by various organisations, including Southwark Council and Arts Council England.

Since its launch in 2008, the programme has commissioned multimedia and location-specific projects "connecting art, people and place through creative experience."