Paradise in Peckham

An Artangel Trust project. A site specific Installation along the former Surrey Canal, in Peckham. 1985.

Commission by the Art Angel Trust (now Art Angel) this site specific institution was constructed and performed during my year long tenure as a Henry Moore Foundation Fellow at the then Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. I was based at the Sumner Road Annexe in the heart of the North Peckham Estate. Each night from sundown onwards for 4 hours I would hang various objects, handmade and found, in the trees along the former Surrey Canal in Peckham. The objects alluded to the multi histories of the area and referenced the every changing struggles of the residents of Peckham. From hundreds of miniature canal boats with quotes on their sails though model houses and on to wax fruit and mussel shells, each morning a new and different tree scape was exposed at dawn. This performative site specific installation cause a stir and the daily dialogues with passers-by form the next nightly iteration of Paradise in Peckham.

Two of the many starting points for this work were firstly a folly that had been built in Peckham in the 17th Century called the ‘Paradise of Peckham’. Built by the poor of the district on behalf of the land owner. The wages were food and serves as an analogy to how the government at the time were treating places like Peckham. Secondly was a fig tree that had grown wild along the canal that serve as the mid-point of the installation. A tree of paradise where the work spewed from.

• https://markingham.org/works/paradise-in...
• https://www.artangel.org.uk/#past