‘The SACRED ECOLOGIST: SIX STORIES OF CULTURAL, ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL FLUORESCENCE’ presents work by artist and Turner Contemporary Digital Commission winner 2020-2021, Christina Peake. Christina will explore not only the autobiographical and familial narratives, Caribbean marine identities and surrogate UK coastal spaces that feed into the work but also the wider scope of her practice including her work as an Educator for The Black Curriculum and outreach within her local community in South London. Her presentation will explore the evolution of her value system rather than creative discipline as the facilitator and catalyst for creative production, interventionist strategies, and radical acts of care.
Victoria Barrow-Williams is the Co-Founder of People Dem Collective and has mentored Christina throughout the commission period. In the summer of 2020 last year, Victoria co-organised a BLM march along the Kent coast that was attended by over 2000 people and the placards were the incorporated into an installation in Turner Contemporary that Christina was to visit and inspired her to apply for the commission.
Fiona Parry is a Senior Curator at Turner Contemporary and has been working closely with Christina throughout the commission. Turner Contemporary has a strong reputation for community focused curatorial practice and engagement. Together, Christina, Fiona and Victoria will form a panel to open the conversation after the initial artist presentation and to reflect on the wider themes and creative ecologies at work.
Christina Peake (born in London, 1982) read Fine Art at the University of Brighton and later graduated with a MA in Postcolonial Studies from Goldsmiths College. Christina’s practise is research led combining fieldwork, primarily engaging communities and the natural environment, grounding learning and engagement within immersive experience. Christina employs a synergistic approach sourcing material from individual testimony, to historical narrative, creating new worlds that are as mercurial as the many stories that informed them. Christina has worked in the UK and internationally within a variety of communities and environments such as the Kukama indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon, to ex-offenders and women exiting prostitution and substance misuse with the charity Women at the Well in Kings Cross, London and currently as an Educator for The Black Curriculum. Christina seeks to share her stories and receive the stories of others with care and this essentially reflects her practice, deepening her contribution to communal collectivity and environment.
Organised by Dr Wenny Teo (The Courtauld)