Matthew Emery
What We Bring to the Table
The first exhibition with Critical Edge Collective
March 2024, Safe House Peckham
In March 2024, Critical Edge Collective held its first exhibition titled ‘What We Bring to the Table’. Held in Safehouse 1, Peckham, the collective responded to the remnants of this former domestic structure with its social symbols of place and subverted the physical space to trigger an investigation of the relationships between inequalities, power, and ephemerality. The show aimed to collectively draw attention to, reframe and explore alternative ways of looking at class tension, the corporal body, paradox, and power.
Safe House 1 March 2024
For the exhibition, Matty made three screen prints and presented them together in the show, with other works spread across the rest of the space. Each print is composed of layered imagery drawn from the city landscape; billboards, weathered walls, and bus stops, interwoven with fragments of torn posters and flyers. These visual elements are combined with found text, including traces of graffiti and advertisements, evoking the texture and rhythm of the city whilst incorporating the unheard voices of under-represented youths with nothing else to do but write "fuck tory" on a wall. (detail from Not)
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