On view 24 hours a day from the street.

An exhibition, as part of the Peer Notices programme, presenting Nisha Duggal and the Peer Ambassadors' collaborative film Unmasked, and individual artworks made by the Ambassadors throughout the year.

When do you most feel yourself?

Do you want other people to connect with the real you?  Do you maintain a hidden, private persona that you reserve for yourself alone?  

These questions, familiar to many forms of portraiture, were pivotal as we approached our project: to make a group portrait that reflected our individualities as well as our connections, and to bond as collaborative artists. Our aim was to work with an authenticity and integrity that was sharpened and challenged as the pandemic took shape. Our physical horizons narrowed with repeated lockdowns and social isolation, whilst our connection to one another and our aspirations took digital flight.

We met through phones and monitors, portals into previously private spaces, touching flat faces with disembodied voices, locked to the wandering gaze of the fixed lens atop our screens. This exhibition assembled footage captured from our day to day lives into a group portrait that shows how we have been through these times, encompassed by our own, creative bubble.  

As our collective bond developed, together we found routine within shifting sands. Invigorated by the space between us, we shared ideas and found freedom in expressing ourselves. We filmed different points of our days, quickly focusing on recording the everyday, finding beauty in the banal, meaning through our shared experiences and new connections where our days diverge.

Walking, stepping out, our feet getting us from somewhere to elsewhere, both physically and psychologically, collectively we dreamed of other places as our footsteps explored the world beyond. A view from a window. Our reflections bursting through, emerging into a new threshold. The sky; we are all looking at the same sky.

Also presented and collaged onto Peer's windows was work made by the Ambassadors over the year. Using paint, pencil drawing, mono printing and collage, the artworks explore the local community, boundaries, the body and hopefulness.

Peer Notices was a unique chance for an artist to work on a public art project on Hoxton Street across a year; allowing deep and embedded relationships to form with place and the people who live, work and study here, supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The commissioned artist for 2020-21 was Nisha Duggal. Starting her commission in September 2020, she devised workshops with the Peer Ambassadors that explored group portraiture, while considering how art on the street interacts with different members of society and how it can be a vehicle for creative engagement with the public. As part of the programme they had been taking residence in Peer's noticeboard next to the Post Office.


Biographies:

Nisha Duggal is an artist and filmmaker working across media to explore expressions of freedom and creativity in the everyday. Working collaboratively with groups in extended workshops, she engineers situations that enable primitive impulses to connect and create, producing layered works that document and extend the process.

Peer Ambassadors are young people aged 17–25, living, working or studying in Hackney, who receive paid gallery experience from Peer. They are the face of Peer welcoming visitors from all walks of life into the gallery and introducing them to our exhibitions. All the while, they are able to gain in depth knowledge to the inner workings of a small arts organisation with a 20+ year history. Alongside the paid experience, they are offered free learning opportunities; participating in gallery and studio visits, inspiring talks from local young creatives and masterclasses from international experts within the field of public art.