on common
Peckham Rye • Burgess Park • Copeland Gallery
A collaborative ‘Rewilding Peckham’ memory exchange installation
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel. Peckham Rye used to be just that. This common right was lost here and throughout the UK as a result of the Enclosure Movements. While we are still fortunate to wander through the now Park and enjoy the scenery, the history of enclosure is embedded within us and manifests itself in our disconnection from local land.
on common tries to reinstate the connection. The installation consists of foraged grasses and dried flowers from Peckham Rye and Burgess Park, all one step from being mowed away after a scorching hot summer. Designated “dead”, I’ve witnessed these beautiful species ploughed down to dust and taken for composting elsewhere. What happened to a land that regenerates itself? Who decided that these plants were waste when they have so much potential to bring new life the next season if we step back long enough for them to continue their growth cycle?
I hope to breathe new life and appreciation into these plants through their display in a hoard of antique glass bottles found by my dad in skips and rubbish dumps across South London in the early 1970s. I hope to help us find more points of connection and relation to the natural world beyond the brightly coloured blooms.
hay fever
Just like the life of these plants, on common extends far beyond the original exhibition! On the day I collected hordes of memories jotted on slips of paper, which detailed the audience’s connection to green spaces and were then placed in a large glass jar. And I’ve since written a piece (total 6 short pages) titled hay fever that brings these musings and secrets together ❀
on common is part of the Green Means sustainable theatre project. Following the record-breaking temperatures this hot summer, the installation is in conversation with Lizzie Nunnery’s play Heavy Weather all about the climate anxiety, performative and genuine activism, and extreme weather. As part of Green Means we hosted two other exciting, FREE events for creatives and families in Peckham Festival 2022, including a site-writing workshop with Lizzie Nunnery herself and a reading of Heavy Weather all in collaboration with Lost Text Found Space.