Overview

Sarah Cole has been working with residents and tenants of Sceaux Gardens in Peckham over the past six months. Her starting point for this research has been an investigation into the history of the housing estate, the people whom the blocks were named after (Colbert, Fontenelle, Mistral, Lakanal, Marie Curie, Florian, Racine and Voltaire) and the lives and languages of the people who live there.

The culmination of this research was exhibited in a flat on the estate during the Sceaux Gardens Summer Festival. Flat 18 Florian became an off-site extension of the South London Gallery, hosting an exhibition of Sarah Cole’s video work as well as offering a series of hands-on workshops for residents of all ages. Local historian Chris Jones examined the history of the estate since its construction in 1957 through map-making games and participative activities, while sound artist Isa Suarez recorded tracks with local people about their homes, the locality and selected quotations by the eight French characters.

Cole presented four video installations (edited by Annis Joslin and Karl Cresser), each exploring the history, location and language of Sceaux Gardens, involving participants of all ages from across the estate. Referencing the words and writings of these French historical figures, Sarah Cole’s approach was to marry each participant’s perspective on where they live with the landscapes described by their French counterparts. Consequently a teenage girl, dressed as a medical rabbit, searched the housing estate, looking for words of wisdom from her residential idol, Marie Curie. An elderly resident revealed her collection of elephants, standing proud on her cabinet: Fontenelle’s metaphor for wisdom and deliberation. And two girls acted out a pillow fight, entrapped in a snow globe, a never ending cycle of frustration and pleasure, as a response to Colbert’s economic doctrines in which he proposes a process for taxation that is in favour of the state.

Sarah Cole’s practice involves collaborative encounters and conversations in contexts beyond the gallery or museum. The collaborations involve dialogue and exchange, and the form of the finished work often includes social events, performances, publications and installations. For State of Play a special edition book of postcards was also produced and delivered to all 400 homes on the estate. Each postcard depicts a person from the estate, performing in character - the bunny, the oracle and her elephant, the water boatman and the nightingale child - creating an alternative narrative for this particular site in South London.