Call for Artists

Call for artist collaborator with Chloe Dewe Mathews and The Ballad of Peckham Rye 
February – April 2020 (9 hours)  Honorarium: £150 Please note the honorarium is for the initial time required to develop a collaborative proposal.  
  
The Project 

Since 2013 artist Chloe Dewe Mathews has developed a body of work that explores the urban environment of the London Borough of Southwark and its rich community of African churches. Sunday Service (2013), commissioned by Tate Modern, explored the reinvention of architectural space in the urban environment, cataloguing a rapid shift from industrial to religious space, while its companion piece, Congregation (2015), looked more closely at the collective religious experience and the nature of expressive worship. Many of Dewe Mathews’s projects take years of preparation, however this body of work is unique in that it represents a sustained engagement with the specifics of her local area and its communities over an extended period.  

Dewe Mathews initially produced Sunday Service as a response to the remarkable fact that in 2011 Southwark had the highest density of African Christianity anywhere in the world outside Africa. Five years on, Dewe Mathews is interested to return to this subject and has been working with Dr. Andrew Rogers (Principal Lecturer in Practical Theology) at Roehampton University on new research that suggests the African population is now moving east, away from Southwark. Peckham has been going through the process of gentrification for over a decade and much anecdotal evidence from church leaders suggests that issues finding space are more keenly felt within the community than ever.  

TBOPR are seeking to commission Dewe Mathews to develop a new work that would use the research and questions posed in Sunday Service and Congregation as a starting point, from which to examine the specific nature of Pentecostal worship in Peckham today. As part of the commission we are seeking to develop a collaborative partnership with an artist whose practice explores similar themes and/or has a connection to local communities in Southwark, to ensure this project brings a necessary and relevant response to Peckham’s changing religious landscape. We envisage the collaboration will result in a co-authored work made in discussion with TBOPR and other members of the community. 

Sunday Service

Sunday Service (2013) C-type print photographic series, 150 x 120 cm and 76 x 61 cm  Sunday Service was commissioned by Tate Modern in 2013. The work was exhibited in the McAulay Gallery, Tate Modern, 28 May – 13 July 2014 and was accompanied by a free publication. 
http://www.chloedewemathews.com/sunday-service/ 

Located in small industrial estates, opposite railway stations, on busy high streets, in former office blocks and bingo halls, in 2011 there were said to be 240 African churches in the south London borough of Southwark, more than double the number of other types of churches in the area. Research by Roehampton University suggested that this represented the greatest concentration of African Christianity in the world outside of Africa. Sunday Service explored the reinvention of architectural space in the urban environment, cataloguing a rapid shift from industrial to religious space, in this pocket of South London. The series combined portraits of people who use and have repurposed the buildings, with photographs of the spaces themselves, which act like collaged records of a local history. 

Congregation (2015)  
Three-channel video installation, commissioned by Tate Modern, first shown in 2015 at Bosse & Baum, Copeland Park Industrial Estate, London. With sound by Coby Sey. Duration: 08:57 http://www.chloedewemathews.com/congregation/ Link here: https://vimeo.com/user104036403/review/367755130/998d6787d3 Password - Congregation 

Congregation is a three-channel video installation exploring collective religious experience and the nature of expressive worship in south London’s African churches. The nine-minute piece, featuring a number of Pentecostal churches in Peckham and Camberwell, combines intimate footage of personal reflection, with large-scale shots of communal ecstasy. In a departure from her practice at the time, Dewe Mathews used moving imagery and sound, rather than still photography, to respond to the dynamic and multi-layered church experience. 

Dewe Mathews said: “I became increasingly interested in the range of spiritual experiences that people were going through on any given Sunday. It’s the fascinating question of how personal experience becomes something else when in a group - a collective experience. How we all influence each other, affect each other and feed off each other. I'm intrigued by congregations as a whole, sometimes performative, other times contemplative but each week a slightly different collective character emerges and it’s more than the sum of its parts.

Congregation was commissioned by Tate Modern and the first screening of the video installation was hosted by Bosse & Baum, a gallery based in an industrial estate on the site of a former church in Peckham. The video footage was projected directly onto the warehouse walls, referencing the building’s history as well as the strong audio visual presence in many of the churches she was working in. The original soundtrack was created by Coby Sey, using recordings made during church services.