{"id":488953,"date":"2026-05-17T08:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T08:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/488953\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T08:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T08:57:14","slug":"rare-public-open-studio-weekend-to-celebrate-20-years-of-peckhams-galleria-a-revolutionary-artist-space-southwark-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/488953\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare public open studio weekend to celebrate 20 years of Peckham\u2019s Galleria, a revolutionary artist space \u2013 Southwark News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A first of its kind, Peckham\u2019s Galleria offers vital workspace for the capital\u2019s artists at half the price of London\u2019s average studio rent<\/strong>, writes Romilly Schulte\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Birthed in 2006 as part of a project to provide affordable studio space, its resident artists will celebrate the development\u2019s 20-year anniversary in a rare open studio weekend this June.<\/p>\n

Painters Eva Bosch and Julian Sharples have worked from the Galleria since the opening of its doors two decades ago, and have summoned together the building\u2019s diverse resident artists to display all of their work for the first time since 2019 in a behind-the-scenes open studios on the weekend of June 6 and 7<\/p>\n

Galleria is operated by Acme, an artist\u2019s charity that began in 1972 with the aim to encourage art production by helping to remove financial burdens \u2013 it now support 800 artists across 15 studios, often acquired in collaboration with developers through 100-plus year leases or property purchases.<\/p>\n

It may be an endless source of creative inspiration, but London is a tricky city to live in as a full-time artist, with monthly rent on private studio spaces often soaring up to and beyond the \u00a3800 mark.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Exterior of Galleria Studios<\/p>\n

\"\"Eva Bosch surrounded by paintings in her studio, with her print-out of Venus of Brassempouy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s getting worse. I have trouble paying the rent. Before I had a job, but now that I am 100 per cent an artist I may not be able to keep the studio,\u201d said 74-year-old Bosch, who worked four days a week as a Spanish teacher before noticing the detriment to her craft.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really, really affected my work. Now I am working at 100 per cent, though penniless, I realise how important it is to have the time and space. There\u2019s a bill for everything \u2013 and I am not an exception,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bosch has been making her prehistoric-inspired paintings since graduating from the Royal College of Arts in 1986, using millennia-old media like iron oxide, animal fats and soapstone in tandem with more traditional oil paints.<\/p>\n

Her newest painting, which was still wet as she spoke to the News, nods to a 26-thousand-year old figurine called the Venus of Brassempouy, which is one of the oldest representations of a human face and stands only 3cm high.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Galleria is part of a housing development on Pennack Road near Burgess park, and was built in partnership with Barratt Homes via the funding of Arts Council England\u2019s Grants for the Arts. This means that one half of the building is residential flats, with artist\u2019s studios on the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of the first of its kind to be built, but also one of the last to be built,\u201d said Sharples, whose studio was decked out in bright canvases of food and scenery, alongside a curtain made of cell-membrane models and a chalkboard where he conducts his online maths and science classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Julian Sharples with his science-inspired cell-membrane curtain. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love it, I love it here. It\u2019s like my sanctuary,\u201d said sculptor Helen Barff, who has worked in South East London since the beginnings of her career in Goldsmiths and Camberwell School of Art.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re right next to each other,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cwhen residents came in, they were like, oh, we see you working!\u201d<\/p>\n

The open studios will get artists mingling with their neighbours and exhibiting their work, but visitors can also buy the original artworks at accessible prices, sometimes at half the cost of what they would sell for in a commercial gallery.<\/p>\n

Sculptor Sandra Lane said: \u201cIt is about being sociable and opening up and meeting people. It is about the pressure of making your studio look good and making your work visible!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Sandra Lane with her sculpture, an homage to the mountains and to beach-side cut outs. <\/p>\n

A lot of the artists expressed how thankful they were for the development\u2019s double-glazed windows \u2013 compared with studios based in old industrial units with high windows and low insulation, Galleria\u2019s artists can work warmly during the winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy last studio was freezing and I couldn\u2019t go there in the winter. When I moved in I was pregnant and I wanted a studio where I could bring my baby. There are some spaces you couldn\u2019t safely take a child to,\u201d said Barff, who has worked in Galleria for 16 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is high demand for space like this. All of Acme\u2019s studios are occupied and some have faced seven-year-long waiting lists, despite recently purchasing a former ship propeller factory that had been used by 180 artists since 1990, but developers had threatened to buy it up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Helen Barff\u2019s plaster casts of pockets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt changed my life when I got the artist residency. I was living in a small flat and other spaces in London cost more than double,\u201d said Isa Suarez, a Basque performer and composer who is currently collaborating with refugees from the Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers on a music project inspired by water.<\/p>\n

\u201cI collect sound recordings from all over the world. They are a metaphor to show that water and rivers are free, they ebb and flow. Migrants come from all over the world and I am making a link with that. Music is a way of connecting with different cultures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For theatre producer and director Kai Sargeant, who has worked with the Young Vic and was associate director of Theatre Peckham, Galleria is his first studio and he says that this space has skyrocketed his work. .\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe explosion of new, young, disabled-led, queer-led, black-led work is diminishing. And I don\u2019t want to be part of a sector that is dying. I want to be innovative and \u2018D.I.Y\u2019 in my approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that there are more Green party councillors in Southwark, I am curious to see whether there will be campaigns for affordable artist spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can we work with developers to provide purpose built artist\u2019s space like this, as opposed to putting artists on short-term contracts, on sublets and on insecure tenures, which mirrors how the housing market works.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil then, artists are going to be living in precarity,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Open Studios is free to attend and will take place from 11am-6pm June 6 and 7, at The Galleria, Pennack Road, Peckham SE15 6PY.<\/strong><\/p>\n

More information on Acme can be found here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A first of its kind, Peckham\u2019s Galleria offers vital workspace for the capital\u2019s artists at half the price…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-488953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116589091182911363","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}