Exhibition programme 2024

Peer is a not-for-profit free-to-access space for contemporary art, located in the neighbourhood of Hoxton in East London. Peer places artists, young people and local communities at the heart of our internationally recognised programmes of exhibitions, artist commissions, workshops, talks and events.

Located in a converted shopfront in Arden Estate on Hoxton Street, Peer overlooks and maintains Khadija’s Garden. Peer has a critically acclaimed 25-year history as one of London’s most experimental spaces for contemporary art and has worked with artists including Chris Ofili, Mike Nelson, Bob & Roberta Smith, Danh Vō, Fiona Banner, Jadé Fadojutimi, Lubna Chowdhary, Moi Tran, Tanoa Sasraku and Iris Touliatou, among many others.

Peer’s exhibition programme for 2024 explores youth work and collaboration, anti-colonial struggle and the UK housing crisis. The year commences with a solo exhibition by artist Ed Webb-Ingall, followed by a new commission by Peer Ambassador Artist in Residence 2023–24, Meera Shakti Osborne. To conclude the year Peer will present a new exhibition by Onyeka Igwe. Throughout 2024, Peer will develop a new commission by artist Leah Clements for 2025.

Ed Webb-Ingall
Opening: Friday February 9
February 10– May 5, 2024

Ed Webb-Ingall is a filmmaker and researcher working with archival materials and methodologies drawn from community video. He often collaborates with groups to explore under-represented historical moments and their relationship to contemporary life. For his exhibition at Peer, Webb-Ingall presents A Bedroom for Everyone. The exhibition comprises a newly commissioned animation that stems from a long-term body of work and that asks what the role of filmmaking is in response to the current housing crisis in the UK. The project explores the power of grassroots activism and organising in the face of this ongoing emergency, while making space for the camaraderie that unfolds in the community centres and meeting halls where this work takes place.

Meera Shakti Osborne
Opening: Friday May 31
June 1–August 24, 2024

Meera Shakti Osborne’s work is interested in the potential of art as a tool in making visible both personal and shared histories. Osborne’s new commission, presented as their first solo exhibition in a public gallery, marks the culmination of their time as the Peer Ambassador Artist in Residence 2023-24. Over their residency Osborne has been working closely with Peer Ambassadors in a unique rolling six-month, creative programme designed for, and led by, young people aged 17-25 from underrepresented and lower socio-economic backgrounds based in Peer’s local area. For their exhibition at Peer, Osborne is producing a body of work that brings numerous voices together to comment on the damaging effects of government policies, such as Prevent, as well as addressing wider questions on freedom of expression and freedom of self.

Onyeka Igwe
Opening: Friday September 20
September 21–December 14, 2024

In autumn 2024 Peer presents a new body of work and first major solo exhibition in a London institution by London-based artist, Onyeka Igwe. Igwe’s work, which comprises video, publishing and installation, asks: How do we live together? Working with film and installation, Igwe’s exhibition at Peer takes as its starting point the year of 1947, when London was a hub of radical anti-colonial activity. The exhibition presents Igwe’s dual timeline film, A Radical Duet (2023), in a sculptural installation. The work imagines what happened when two women of different generations, both fighting for independence, came together in 1940s London to write a revolutionary play.

Peer is a registered charity and part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio and is supported by Hackney Council through a Voluntary Community Sector Lease. All of the gallery’s exhibitions and the majority of events are free and open to all.

Peer’s 2024 Programme is supported by Headline Supporter, Mandy El-Sayegh with additional support from Peer Patrons and Network. The Peer Ambassadors Programme is supported by the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund.

Ed Webb-Ingall’s A Bedroom for Everyone was commissioned by Grand Union and is supported by Oak Foundation, Arts Council England, Serpentine Galleries, Art Fund and University of Birmingham.

A Radical Duet was commissioned by FLAMIN Productions through FILM LONDON Artists’ Moving Image Network with funding from Arts Council England. Igwe’s exhibition is produced in collaboration with Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, where it opened on January 13, 2024.

A Bedroom for Everyone was commissioned by Grand Union where it was on show from 15th September until December 9, 2023. The animation is currently on show at Devonshire Collective and will tour to Peer from February 9, 2024.

Peer’s most recent programme was Outfits, a new commission and first solo exhibition in a public gallery by artist Iris Touliatou from October 7 to December 16, 2023.