INTERFACE
Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
REVIEW
I Love Peckham – Shop Windows
Various venues, Peckham
6-12 August
Reviewed by: David Lillington
A critic complained recently that too many contemporary sculptures “are not much more than theatre props”. But some of the best contemporary sculpture has more than a touch of the theatre prop about it. Some artists make actual props for performances. Perhaps they are undoing an old spell. Or ignoring convention. On the other hand, this kind of work is as old as the twentieth century, and older.
Shop windows are like stage sets. They also have much in common with graphic design. The most successful artists here grasped all this, and also that set design, graphics and window dressing share a lack of squeamishness about commerce – not art commerce, but any commerce.
Naomi St Clair-Clarke made for Ace Hair and Beauty two headdresses, each as big as a peacock’s tail, built from wickerwork and hair-pieces. They were immediately likeable. Would her work look as good in a gallery? Quite possibly. Besides, if someone complained that this is window-dressing, not art, this is absurd – she is window dressing. And there’s no reason for art not to emulate window-dressing.
These artists are in a symbiosis. The shops show their work and they advertise the shops. Both together demonstrate their community involvement. I gather the artists’ budgets were £200 each. I said to someone from the council, “I suppose you can’t spend your whole budget on art,” to which he replied, “One year we did” – an unexpected reply, perhaps exaggerated. Issues of public money and of pay for artists interest us all.
Three criticisms I can imagine are: 1) it was tacky; 2) it was hand in glove with commerce (probably the least of the issues); 3) it was the result of current funding dogma. None of these objections really stand up, in my view. Sure, there was an element of fun – that was the nature of the thing. But also artists are astonishingly adaptable and the best approached these issues head-on. I liked: Darren Coffield’s Angel of Peckham, after Blake, Mimi Potrowoska’s elaborate boat with stories for sails, the silver and cardboard dogs’ heads for the dog parlour by Rachael House, the wigs (mentioned), Garudio Studiage’s pirates’ treasure in Sense charity shop (including a mock Hirst skull), Judith Thomson’s Exhibiting Belief, with blackboard (well-used by customers when I saw it) and Harald Smykla’s interactive portrait-making with overhead projector and drawings. The Multiplex cinema manager’s explanation of the work was clearer than Smykla’s own handout – but then that indicates her genuine involvement.
And others there isn’t room to mention. I think I would have liked (had I seen them!): Ruth Beale’s pub quiz (went well, apparently); Mark McGowan leaping out from behind his prop (a bush) to startle passers-by; Neil Drabble’s pub game. All ‘live’ – more theatre, then. The man from the council said to organiser Emily Druiff (I heard this myself), “You have done in Peckham what many have tried to do, and failed.” I look forward to the next ‘Peckham Shop Windows’.
Writer detail:
David Lillington
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