Real Estates

PEER Gallery comprises two connected former high-street shops on the ground floor of the Arden Estate, where Andrea Luka Zimmerman and I were invited as residency artists. Real Estates was a six week project opening PEER up as a social, discursive and imaginative space around issues of housing and spatial justice in East London through a constantly changing series of exhibitions, screenings, discussions, readings and workshops. It marked the end of a seven-year series of collaborative works with our neighbours of the Haggerston Estate. Our work came from within the community, with whom we cultivated other spaces to gather, share and campaign before the estate was demolished in 2014. 

We had initially pitched a proposal for the transformation of the gallery to act as a community and campaign base for the residents of the neighbouring New Era Estate which, at that time, was embroiled in a public campaign to stop a sell-off which would entail a tripling of their rents. The unexpected success of this campaign prompted us to broaden our focus, as it demonstrated a growing potential for effective change as well as a wider public concern for housing issues. We re-oriented our programme to expand the scope for collaboration and create a space where successful strategies, such as New Era’s, could be shared more widely. We developed a programme to unite other live campaigns across London; north-east – Focus E15 Campaign on the Carpenters Estate, north-west – West Hendon Estate, south – Aylesbury Estate, south-east – Excalibur Estate, south-west – Cressingham Gardens. 

The west gallery was devoted to twice-daily events. Andrea and I coordinated the programme to ensure that live campaigns were located as part of a wider movement, both geographically and historically. This was developed with a programme of talks, screenings of artists’ films and activist documentaries, alongside workshops on eviction resistance, migrant housing rights, legal defence and squatting advice in which public housing as a matter of common concern was shared, and modes of resistance developed and supported.

The east gallery was a rolling exhibition space which changed every week, providing a short-term residency for different campaign groups with different material displayed. Once the events had been scheduled at PEER, we handed the display and curation of the gallery space, and the direction of discussions within it, over to each of the campaign groups, allowing them to share their work and their knowledge with other thinkers and practitioners on their own terms. For example, the Focus E15 Campaign, denied access to a permanent home of their own, transformed the gallery space into a living room with armchairs, bookcases and table lamps, softening the edges of the space but hardening the politics with protest banners hung on walls and discussions on squatting and eviction within the context of a dislocated home.

The exhibition was an opportunity to extend our collaboration with Haggerston Estate to other communities, campaigners and artists who have made it their life’s work to make visible the impacts of eviction, displacement and homelessness on everyday lives. These rooms hosted works and events that connect us, that illuminate, that bring pain to the surface, that inspire tenderness, that voice solidarity. Together we hoped to develop a deeper understanding and find strategies to resist terrifying social injustices and restore ethical imperatives.

Exhibiting work from: Fugitive Images (Andrea Luka Zimmerman and David Roberts), Tom Hunter, James Mackinnon, Bekki Perriman, Moyra Peralta, Cardboard Citizens, DIG Collective (William Bock, Alberto Duman, Sophie Mason and Mark Morgan), Focus E15 Campaign, Smart Urhoife, UEL Unit 10.

Contributions from: Owen Jones, Hackney Digs, Pau Faus, Pau Faus, Silvia Gonzáles-Laá, Xavi Andreu, John Smith, Jane Rendell, Beverley Robinson, Aysen Dennis, Richard Baxter, Caterina Sartori, Brandon LaBelle, John Rogers, Jeremy Till, Barry Watts, Ken Loach, Kerry Simmons, Dave Sinclair, Lesley Woodburn, Sarah Kwei, Dave Smith, Paul Heron, Felicity Downing, Adrian Jackson, Marcia Farquhar, David Madden, Lisa McKenzie, Tom Gann, Alberto Duman, Louise Sayarer, Eva Vikstrom, Tom Cordell, Kate Macintosh, Paul Watt, Melissa Butcher, Jon Fitzmaurice, Fuel Poverty Action, Tawanda Nyabango, Jasmin Parsons, Geraldine Dening, Simon Elmer, Alison Balance, Patrick Langley, Morgan Quaintance, Rab Harling, Sue Lukes, Advisory Service for Squatters, Green and Black Cross, Legal Defence and Monitoring Group, Sweets Way Estate, HASL, Unite Communities, Our West Hendon, Guinness, Skills Network, Radial Housing Network, Dorothy Allan-Pickard, Rastko Novakovic, Steven Ball, Kate Belgrave, Jason Parkinson, Julian Samboma, LCAP, Sibyl Trigg, John Murray, Elisabeth Blanchet, Jane Hearn, Andre Anderson, Raze, Predz UK, Kayden Bell, Jade Snyper, Nathaniel Telemaque, Municipal Dreams, Guillaume Meigneux, Stephen Watts, Lorna Forrester, Elam Forrester, Alison Marchant, Gillian McIver, Emer Mary Morris, Cathy Ward, Nela Milic.

Reviews

Real Estates is undoubtedly a landmark exhibition of canonical significance… By using a model that gave the gallery over to citizens, activists, artists and campaigners to arrange and use as a spatial resource, and by focusing each week on a specific and clear theme which engendered lively discussion, Real Estates succeeded in creating a democratic space in which hierarchical distinctions fell away, connections were made and conversations led to concrete and sustained action beyond the gallery, Morgan Quaintance, Art Monthly, March 2016.