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Creative London

Art Loop

—Andrea Sinkovics Terezak

A new form of street art could be spotted in Peckham between 6 and 12 August; except that the show, called I Love Peckham Shop Windows, brought street-style art inside various local shops and into their window displays – the first time retail outlets have been used as platforms for art in the area. In the same week the Hospital gallery in Covent Garden opened a show, Warhol vs Banksy, matching works by Andy Warhol against those of graffitist Banksy, including Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe and Banksy’s Kate Moss in the style of Marilyn.

With one up West and the other in South-East London, the two shows together comprised a loop of art, consumerism and urbanism. First, Warhol took the paraphernalia and phenomena of shopping and consumption, and moved them into a different kind of shopping place – the gallery. In the 1980s, as privatised malls started to replace the public domain, many young people found themselves excluded from retail space and so began to mark out their own places by ‘tagging’. In the new millennium Banksy and others brought this street art into galleries, and now in Peckham it has found its way into shop windows. All roads, it seems, lead to Retail.

The movement of art from galleries into everyday life was writ large in Banksy’s unique and subversive work. The 30 artists in 30 shops in Peckham also aimed to undermine the concept that art belongs exclusively to galleries, and sought to do more than merely highlight the shops in which they were situated.

Both were interventions into shared space. However, while Banksy’s images are striking and humorous, often carrying a pointed political message, Peckham’s displays didn’t always work in their own terms, but served as a visual trademark for an area in search of self-recognition.

Curator of I Love Peckham Shop Windows, Emily Druiff said, ‘Thousands and thousands of pounds are invested in shop window decorations each year, but with a completely different idea than at Peckham’s exhibition. What we had in mind was to create a different context where shop managers collaborate with artists in order to produce something quite site specific that could become a unique celebration of Peckham.’

Banksy’s most expensive piece to date is Space Girl and Bird, which was auctioned for nearly £290,000 at Bonham’s earlier this year. Whereas the winning installation in I Love Peckham Shop Windows, designed by Camberwell art student Naomi St Claire-Clarke and displayed at Ace Hair + Beauty at 103 Rye Lane, is …. priceless.

Peckham residents’ reactions were mixed: some were enthusiastic, others commented that you could not tell the shop windows were meant to be art. Contributing artist Ines Lebelo admitted, ‘In such projects the line between art and everyday life gets thinner, thus it is not so easily recognisable.’ Nevertheless shopkeepers and show organisers are aiming to bring the show back with a bigger budget.

Prices for Bansky’s work continue to rise; and Warhol’s ‘15 minutes’ are famously ongoing.

Andrea Sinkovics Terezak is a reporter for Rising East

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