PEER/PARTICIPATE

IN AND OUT OF SITE

 

14 – 29 July 2011

 

Over the past six months PEER/Participate Artist Ambassadors Louisa Martin and Maria Amidu have worked with two Hackney schools to produce artwork which extends young people’s understanding of contemporary art and celebrates

their local area.

 

Using the 360-degree view of Shoreditch as seen from the top of the Bridge Academy, as their starting point, Year 7 art students have worked with Louisa to unearth hidden stories from the neighbourhood.

Inspired by PEER’s recent exhibition of work by Andrew Lanyon, they have blurred local fact and fiction to produce stories and tall tales, which

are presented in the exhibition as sound works. These are shown alongside large scale painted portraits in which information is missing or hidden and replaced by bizarre details that relate to the sound works.

 

Pupils from Years 1 and 2 at St Monica's R.C. Primary School have been working with Maria during their geography lessons. Taking ‘our local area’ as their starting point, they began by investigating two public realm projects commissioned by PEER – John Frankland’s landmark work Boulder in Shoreditch Park and the Shop Local signs by Bob and Roberta Smith on two walls along Hoxton Street. The pupils have observed and recorded the urban landscape around them and made drawings that reveal what is important to them about where they live and go to school. These have been reproduced onto ceramic plates for the exhibition.

 

In and Out of Site is the first showcase of PEER/Participate, a radical two-year pilot learning and participation scheme, which addresses issues of community cohesion and civic participation within the local environment of Hoxton. With experimentation and creative learning at its core, the programme targets specific groups in the local community and works with participants to draw out individual potential, improve self-confidence and develop self expression through creative practice.

 

PEER/Participate is supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation