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Food from the Rye: Salt Fish

From: http://helengraves.co.uk/2009/12/food-from-the-rye-salt-fish/

Peckham’s Rye Lane is a right higgle piggle of shops. Traders pile on top of one another; get your mobile phone unlocked while you wait for the butcher to dice your goat meat. There are towers of unusual vegetables, mountains of scotch bonnet chillies, the odd box of African land snails and of course yams, yams and yet more yams  (just don’t look at the frozen fish or broiler chickens). There’s so much interesting stuff down there I just can’t get through it fast enough so I’ve set myself a little challenge. For the next few weeks, I’ll pick up a new ingredient every few days – something I’ve never used before and quite possibly something I won’t recognise. A new and exciting culinary adventure.

Things kicked things off on Sunday with salt fish – something I’ve eaten many times but never got around to cooking at home. A few quid bought me the chunks you see above. I’ve no idea what type of fish it is though and didn’t have much joy communicating with the shop keeper: “do you know what type of fish it is?” “£3,” was the reply. It went on like that for a while. We’ll get there.  Read more…

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Emerging Artists Find a New ‘Blank Canvas’ in London

Special Report: Contemporary Art New York Times  By Alice Pfeiffer: October 14, 2009
Peckham, a run-down district of London, south of the Thames, is said to have the capital’s highest concentration of knife crime, hairdressers and gospel churches.
Now, add up-and-coming artists: in easy reach of some of the capital’s leading art schools, the area’s low prices and vast, empty industrial spaces are attracting experimental avant-garde collectives, studios and galleries — a countercultural challenge to the established North-of-the-river world of the Frieze art fair and the gentrified East End.
“Peckham is the land of the free. It’s like a blank canvas,” said Hannah Barry, an enterprising 26-year-old who founded her eponymous gallery last year in a warehouse of a former cricket bat factory.  At the end of an industrial road populated by factories and faith groups, Ms. Barry and her co-director Sven Mündner, 31 — both graduates of Cambridge — put on 15 to 20 shows a year, showcasing young emerging artists. Ms. Barry and Mr. Mündner have also put on an annual sculpture show since 2006, on the roof of an abandoned parking garage nearby. “We felt there was room for an ambitious sculpture park in London,” Ms. Barry said. In June, she and Mr. Mündner took Peckham to a global audience, with a show, the “Peckham Pavilion,” on the fringes of the Venice Biennale.  read more …

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A Collision in the Bussey Building

On Sat 22 August 2009 in the Bussey Building the fourth annual Collision event will be taking place including appearances by Genetic Moo.

“…a creative experiment in which artists and audience will simultaneously engage in a form of social interaction based on game theory… Alongside a collection of site specific works, artists and performers will facilitate altered versions of familiar social situations and games in which the audience is invited to participate…”

Read more…

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Sun shines on Open House walks

What a wonderful weekend in Peckham Central. The sun shone and over 140 people flocked to take the Open House weekend walks led by The Peckham Society on Saturday and Sunday (see photos). Everyone enjoyed the magnificent views of Peckham and central London from the roof of the Bussey building. They enjoyed the refreshments in the CLF Arts Café and the Peckham Vision exhibition of the latest information about the tram & tram depot plans, and the ideas for that central area of Peckham town centre if the tram depot is not located there.

The tours looked at the huge size and good solid condition of the historic Bussey building and how it is already providing spaces for new creative arts and music businesses; the scope for creative development of the whole business site which would otherwise be demolished for the proposed tram depot; the historic gems of Holdron’s Victorian arcades which, currently hidden by shop fittings, could be restored for commercial town centre use; the way all that would complement the opening up of the piazza in front of the station, now agreed as the aim by Southwark Council, the train companies and Southwark’s London Assembly representative; and how Bar Story and the Sassoon Art Gallery in Blenheim Grove behind the station show further signs of the burgeoning creative re-uses of historic architecture in Peckham Central.

See also:
CLF Weekender

Open House Weekend