Tom Jeffreys leaves east London. Good lord...
Peckham – thanks to Hannah Barry (and lashings of Campari) the hitherto oft-overlooked area of south London is now firmly on the radar of any fan of contemporary art. Shamefully however I've only been to Peckham twice – once for a weekend of art/music/fun-times at auto-italia, and then to check out the beautifully expanded South London Gallery. So when I heard that Holly Willats of Art Licks was doing a tour round some of Peckham's most innovative galleries and art spaces I could hardly say no.
Set up in January this year, Art Licks is currently a kind of contemporary art Cerberus, its three heads not, thankfully, the drooling jagged maws of Greek mythology, but instead a website, a magazine, and these art tours. The magazine is a crisply designed, witty and intelligent insight into the state of art today, whilst the website offers users information about all the underground art happenings in London. The tours take you directly to them, and – expertly paced and guided by Holly – it's a perfectly pitched afternnon of artiness.
We kick off at Camberwell Space, inside Camberwell College of Arts, where Juan Bolivar, curator of the current exhibition, Terminator, is on hand to talk us through this exploration into new strategies of artistic production and expression. Although the show is not to my personal tastes I'm intrigued by John Chilver's bafflingly enigmatic 'Learn Their Logic/Notice Their Grief' and James Hopkins' 'Vanitas Still Life', which features various objects traditionally associated with the genre. The twist is that they've all been painstakingly carved out of a coffin, stood nearby.
From here we visit another four galleries and art spaces of various shapes and sizes. There's the aptly named NewGallery, run by the man behind Sassoon Gallery and Bar Story. Again the work is not exactly me – an interactive exploration of internet art phenomenon Dump.FM – but the space, complete with cute little café, is really cool.
I really like what the guys at Sunday Painter are up to – their current exhibition, Dark Matter, feels very slick and well thought through. I particularly like Thomas Wright's use of poured gloss paint on board. There's a richness, a depth, and a half-hidden raggedness that, by providing a surprise clue to the production process, subtly undercuts each glossy veneer. Tom Hackney's re-imagining of one of Duchamp's famous chess games and Andy Jackson's 'A View From Crystal Palace Park Road' also stand out.
After all this art it's time for the pub, but alas we're only walking through on the way to meet the Bun House Bandits, located at the back of the brilliantly shabby Bun House. This pair of art chancers seem right at home chatting to the local booze veterans in the cramped little smoking area, and it's cool to see interaction like this – it never happens in Hackney... I also really like the intriguing installation work (by one of Anish Kapoor's stone-carvers, I think) in the space there.
But the highlight for me, and I'm surprised by this, is what's going on at Peckham Space. To be honest 'community interaction' art projects usually bore me to tears, but this one is wicked, mainly because the results are so enlightening and unusual. Artist Harold Offeh teamed up with a load of local kids to see what they'd do to the area if they could do anything they like. Instead of all-night binge-drinking sessions (which would have got my vote) they've plumped for better outdoor seating, clearer street lights and some slick attempts to demonstrate a bit of pride in the local community. The results – produced in collaboration with a design team from Central St Martins – are genuinely exciting. One hopes – with little real hope – that the council actually take some of these ideas on board. Peckham – with its fasinating history and bright future – deserves such vision.
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