In 2015 artist Janette Parris took to the streets of Peckham to meet local businesses, traders and shoppers with whom she struck up relationships.
Parris made comic-style digital drawings of Rye Lane and the characters she met on her travels, later redrawing them on the gallery walls. The final artwork was a 60 metre long wall painting of these street scenes in the Rye Lane-Choumert Grove pedestrian alley. Her use of bright colours and busyness depicts the rich culture of everyday life in Peckham’s vibrant town centre.
Parris’s observational exploration of Peckham’s identity was the starting point for a series of digital portraiture and animation workshops led by Parris with Year 10 students at Harris Academy Peckham. Parris animated some of these conversations in a video work Everyday
Tales.
