Em invited me recently to take part in I Love Peckham Residency this summer and make a work for a shop window. As my current work is focused on "location as a carrier of meaning" I thought it is a lovely opportunity to explore stories of Peckham and see how will the affect the process of production.
About ten days ago we (participating artists and Em) met at Peckham to see our shop windows and meet our shop managers :) I, at the time, was triyng to hold myself from any strong ideas of how and what I want to do – well, not before I see where I am supposed to work. It was a lovely saturday afternoon in Peckham – everybody were out on the streets, lots of traffic, lots of people – everything buzzing. Sounds, smells, images,… I decided just to listen, look, smell, feel Peckham.
From the very beginning I had very strong reaction to liveliness of Peckham – almost as I wanted to do something to counterpart the "noise" coming from colours, sounds, everything. So white kept on coming back, over and over and over again. Then after we saw all the shops, had a cup of coffee to recuperate – I left the bunch and decided to have a stroll down high street to once again experience the dynamics of Peckham. Then, it stuck me: FEATHERS… flying feathers, white flying feathers… that was it.
I immidiately left to Hackney and did a research on feathers and Peckham… what is the connection? is there a connection?and I found it: a story about a woman who's known as Angel of Peckham! But that was not all, a week later – Katie Heyes my friend and colleague mentioned William Blake's vision of angels in Peckham Rye – oh that was wonderful :)
