PEER 20TH ANNIVERSARY LIMITED EDITIONS SHOWCASE

To mark and celebrate twenty years of Ingrid Swenson’s tenure as director of PEER and her recent MBE Award for Services to the Arts in East London, artists Cornelia Parker and John Stezaker have very generously produced prints in limited editions of 50 each to support PEER’s programme, which will be launched to the public on 2 November. We are using this as an opportunity to highlight some of PEER’s achievements over the past two decades with a display of previous artists’ editions and publications from Mike Nelson, Fiona Banner, Anthony McCall, Kathy Prendergast, John Smith, Bridget Smith and many others.

November marks twenty years to the month since Ingrid began working at PEER, which was then known as The Pier Trust. Over this period, Ingrid has developed a curatorial strategy that acknowledges how art can and should have a meaningful and powerful place in the lives of people across the whole spectrum of our diverse society. Ingrid’s work has been far-reaching nationally and internationally, but always rooted in an embrace of the community. Over these two decades, it has been a great privilege for PEER to have been able to work with more than 150 emerging, mid-career and established artists; ranging from the one-off event to more ambitious and complex commissions.

To set us on our way towards the next twenty years, we are delighted that both Cornelia Parker and John Stezaker have so generously agreed to make limited edition prints to be sold to support our artistic and local programmes.

Cornelia Parker OBE, RA is well known for her large-scale, often site-specific, installations. Working in a wide variety of media, Parker’s work frequently features destructive amalgamations of household objects that have been layered, broken, or repurposed into new structures. Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), an impressive 30 feet tall structure, the design of which is based on the Bates family motel seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960), is currently installed in The Annenberg Courtyard at the RA and available to view to the public.

In 2016 Parker generously donated an artwork to PEER’s auction at Sotheby's, proceeds of which contributed to fundraising to radically improve the public realm area to the front of PEER, as well as improving gallery facilities.

Parker’s recent solo exhibitions include The Palace of Westminster (2018); Hayward touring exhibition (2018/19); Metropolitan Museum of Art (2016); Whitworth Gallery (2015); Terrace Wires Commission, St Pancras International Station (2015); British Library, touring to Whitworth Gallery and Bodleian Library (2015); Ikon Gallery (2014). Parker’s work is held in numerous collections worldwide including Tate; British Council; Centre Pompidou; Fundacio La Caixa; Museum of Modern Art and Yale Center for British Art. Alan Cristea Gallery has been publishing Parker’s editions since 2008.

John Stezaker is one of the leading artists in contemporary photographic collage and appropriation. Employing vintage photographs, old Hollywood film stills, travel postcards and other printed matter, Stezaker creates seductive and fascinating small-format collages that bear qualities of Surrealism, Dada, and found art.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention.

Stezaker’s work has been exhibited internationally since the 1990s and his recent solo exhibitions include The Approach (2018); Centre for Contemporary Photography (2018); Whitworth Gallery (2017-18); City Gallery Wellington touring to Govett-Brewster Art Gallery; Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu; Petzel Gallery (2017); York Art Gallery (2017); Ikon Gallery (2017); Gallery Sofie Van de Velde (2016); Richard Gray Gallery (2015); De La Warr Pavilion (2015); The Netherlands Fotomuseum (2015); Anna Schwartz Gallery (2014); Centre de la Photographie Genève (2013); Capitain Petzel (2013); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2013); Whitechapel Gallery, touring to MUDAM and Kemper Art Museum (2011-12).