"We are a group of people composed of who we are". A rich history of collective work - artistic, cultural, social - in Hackney
Ron Orders, Somewhere in Hackney, (1980), BFI
We’re always on the look out for initiatives that cross-over cultural, social, political and technical realms. New to us is the Peer centre in Hoxton. As their About page puts it, they are a
not-for-profit neighbourhood space for contemporary art, located in Hoxton, East London. We place artists and local communities at the heart of our internationally recognised programmes of public exhibitions, collaborative projects, talks, events and offsite commissions.
In that spirit they have a major exhibition opening on 22 June 2023, 6.30pm - 8.30pm, titled we are a group of people composed of who we are. It’s “a survey exhibition that traces artistic, cultural and social collective work that took place in Hackney between 1971 and 1986. More below:
Bringing together new commissions, existing artworks, literature, film and archival material, the exhibition and accompanying events programme explore the radical, influential and often entwined histories of cooperative and collective work in the borough.
Examining how social and political commitments were supported by an engagement with art, literature and culture, the exhibition focuses on the complexities of collective work, and questions how we might learn from the past in order to reimagine our futures.
Taking 1971 as a starting point – the year that the Centerprise cooperative opened in Dalston – the exhibition maps a moment in time when collective work was being tested as a means to combat oppression and inequality, often led by Hackney’s migrant communities, artists, socialists, and working-class east Londoners.
Centerprise’s long-term home was on Kingsland Rd in Dalston, but its origins came from Hoxton Café Project, a youth project and cafe located just a stone’s throw away from Peer’s home on Hoxton Street. When Hoxton Café Project closed in 1969, two ex-employees envisioned a new space to support and sustain self-determined access to learning, culture and services for working-class people in the area.
In 1971 Centerprise was founded with the principle that “the arts, youth and community work, social work and education itself, are not separate entities invariably requiring separate institutions. They are related and interdependent”. Alongside a bookshop and café, the space ran various youth activities such as chess clubs, drama and art classes, a reading and writing project, as well as legal advice and childcare facilities.
we are a group of people composed of who we are includes archival material relating to Centerprise’s early years, alongside various associated initiatives such as Hackney Peoples Press, Hackney Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Hackney Gutter Press, Hackney Miscarriage, Homeless in Hackney, East London Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist News and Hackney Unemployed Media Scheme, all displayed in custom-made tables that act as sites for congregation and conversation, as well as study.
Ephemera from Free Form, The Rio Tape/Slide Newsgroup, The Lenthall Road Workshop and Hackney Flashers, produced in collaboration with artists Ingrid Pollard, Jo Spence, Maggie Murray, and Neil Martinson among others, map a web of interconnected collaborations between artists, writers, and community organisers.
New commissions by artists Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe occupy both the outside and inside of the gallery. Building on their research on civic space as a site for storytelling and activism, Joyce’s public mural reflects on the narratives explored throughout the exhibition, offering a sharp focus on how issues, such as damp and unsafe housing, are still relevant today, perhaps more than ever.
In the exhibition space, Loewe visually traces the interdependencies and solidarities between the collectives, campaigns and artists included in the exhibition, disrupting a linear reading of history and personal experience.
A series of public events and workshops will take place throughout the exhibition. In bringing together diverse voices from a range of generations and backgrounds we are a group of people composed of who we are explores what it means to cooperate and collectivise.
We are struck by the diversity of media/cultural forms that sprang out of the various activisms around anti-racism and women’s rights - and how this narrating and representing of Hackney constituted its identity. But so tactile - print and photo shops, archives of media, magazines, games spaces… Is it a good thing that all these energies can now easily have a digital expression? Or is there something about the social materiality of all this that we should recover - a counterbalance t0 all our virtual possibilities?