Critical friends at Peckham Space www.peckhamspace.com
I’m so happy to be a member of this group. An eclectic mix of local people who are interested in Peckham Space and it’s development. The chair is Sarah Rowles of Q-art fame, a brilliant listener and communicator. The aims of the group are: audience development, raising awareness of the activities/links, to encourage young people’s participation in FE and HE, to provide a forum for open critical, discussion about PS and input into future activity.
So, what is Peckham Space? It commissions location-specific art with high-quality artists and local communities. It is an iconic position in the middle of a busy shopping area, which hosts exhibitions that have meaning to locals. It’s a community resource building social capital in Peckham.
Its partner networks include: University of the Arts, Southwark Council, VAPA (Visual & Performing Arts), Harris Academy (Peckham), Tate Modern and others.
The next event is Peckham Space Peace Month (8 Aug-2 Sept) with a programme of free public events www.peckhamspace.com. Critical Friends will be going out onto the street and asking people ‘What is the role of an art space in Peckham Square?’.
Out of many, one (Art Monthly Jul-Aug 12, 358) Mark Wilsher
Mark thinks that the model of participatory practice in some of the large-scale Olympic projects in the UK, is conservative and tokenistic. He questions what the audience is meant to experience through participation.
Lone Twin’s: Boat Project. People of the South East are invited to contribute wooden objects. The stories associated with each object are recorded and documented to form an archive of the area’s history. The artists then take this group of over a thousand objects to construct a seaworthy boat that travels around the coast.
So participants contribute objects that are bought together in one clear image or symbol that is provided by the artist. Anyone is invited to get involved, no special skills required or big investment in time. Similarly, Yoko Ono’s SMILE at the Serpentine invites people to upload photos of themselves smiling – to form an online film.
These projects require a defined end-point (imposed from the beginning) that unifies the contributions – a powerful visual symbol: ‘easily exchanged conceptual singularity’. But does the individual’s participation matter? In Antony Gormley’s Waste Man (2006) he provided a strong final image (a man) and asked people to donate furniture that had special meaning to them. The burning process could be considered to be transformative, as memories were released and people set free of past pain.
But the whole organising structure might be criticised on the basis of its top-down, hierarchical imposition of order. If the end result is preordained the specifics of an individual’s participation are meaningless and tokenistic, an illusion of power. No one is permitting people to have a say in how things evolve.
Does this matter? If the public get to take part and see their contributions add up to something, and the artists get to open their working practices to wider participation, what’s the problem? This model has the negative effect of obscuring more progressive alternatives; genuinely collaborative works involving the public. The emphasis on materiality is a retrograde denial of social relationships. Other models and processes of more nuanced collaboration or alternative systems don’t stand a chance among the official programme of crowd-pleasing spectacle and public showmanship
Marina Abramovicz: The artist is present
A moving film, great theatre and contemporary artwork. Documenting her MoMA show, the build-up, love/life and the experience itself. She’s a heady mix of vulnerability, will power and spiritualism – a sort of living-day Guru. Her strength and beauty is electrifying, not only in her performances but in everything, a pure elegance. I was genuinely touched and left the cinema feeling human, pleasantly sad and a bit slowed-down. Feeling open, I found my eyes resting on the many faces I don’t usually see on my way home. This is definitely art as transformation. With the true generosity of a great artist, she gave people the simple gift of attention; connecting to a fundamental humanity that unites us all.
Stephen Willats: surfing with the attractor. South London Gallery 1/6-15/7/12.
Mixed feelings about this show. Is it a rigid (male) structure, a system that isn’t really saying anything about the world today? Is it ‘socially engaged’?
He originally showed at SLG in 1998, interested in art institutions and how they operate in society. He set up models of ‘socially interactive practice’ that celebrated community, with public meetings in the local kicking and punching club, Baptist Church, Children’s centre etc. The meetings served to attract participants who would take part in workshops that involved a set walk in the local estate. Participants were given Super 8 cameras and were free to record anything they felt that had symbolic reference to the area. It seems that the process used to collect ‘data’ (and defining the framework) involved time and open negotiation, where participants were collaborating equally and using their own sense of meaning and language in creating the work. He encouraged people to create their own journeys and to engage in dialogue with visitors to the gallery: connecting the gallery and the outside context/community.
By contrast, for the current show he invited 14 artists (not local community) to create the work that is shown in the gallery. He defined two walks (Peckham Rye and Oxford Street) and each artist was given recording equipment and a brief or ‘data stream’ (eg facial expression, signs of order, space between people). The mosaic structure used to present the work looks similar to the show 14 years ago, but is this social engagement?
Thinking about my three words for the Summer of Love Project (hierarchy, equality and access) it scores pretty low. But I’m still curious and going along to the discussion on 19th July ‘From one thing into another’, which explores the influence of his work on a younger generation of artists.
‘Bookmare’ at Camberwell Space (12-13 July)
Curated by Susan JohanKnecht and Finlay Taylor
Seeing this show reminded me of an article in Art Monthly a few months ago, about participation. The last paragraph of the article gave a nod to participation as a private experience, rather than the olympic crowd-pleasing spectacles that are appearing everywhere. I associate the experience of reading a book (for pleasure) with intimacy; a gentle unfolding slow discovery. Encountering the works in this show felt like reading a great book – both private and connecting to a bigger whole.
The physical exhibition space was small and contained but like great poetry, each piece had clearly been thoughtfully positioned; relationships and juxtaposition carefully considered. The work required effort to engage, and interpretation material was minimal, but the rewards were rich and long-lasting.
The curators’ gave a talk and there were a series of performances/talks; opportunities to pose questions, share thoughts and open-up. This, for me, felt like meaningful participation. A real contrast to the rigid (closed) structure of the Stephen Willat’s show next door at SLG (report coming soon).
