Eddie Peake

Eddie Peake’s artwork often takes the form of immersive  exhibitions in which an examination of self-identity spirals out into an expansive engagement with desire, shame, the body and the city. The work situates itself inside the fourth wall, the liminal space between different worlds, between the viewer and the viewed, the imagined and the real. From here it explores the implicit drama within personal relationships—whether familial, professional, romantic, sexual or social—and how those relationships are acted upon by cultural constructs such as gender and psychological states such as depression. One particular preoccupation is with masculinity: how it may be stretched, and treated critically while holding on to a love for certain aspects of male physicality and feeling. Another is with the lapses and voids inherent to translation between verbal and nonverbal modes of communication: how to inhabit the discrepancies between words and other language—say images, emotions, bodily movements or sounds.

Brightly coloured paintings, smooth gradients blended against hard-edged lines. Polished sculptures made of Jesmonite. Performances involving dancers, actors and musicians, many naked but head-to-toe in body paint. Walled structures with corridors, windows and smashed holes. Sound works composed of digitally manipulated scripted voices. The exhibition is where these elements come together and sing from the same song sheet, sometimes in ways that seem cohesive and inevitable, other times incongruous and surprising. Peake also DJs under a pseudonym and runs a record label called Hymn.

Peake has exhibited extensively in commercial galleries, art fairs, museums, institutions, nonprofit & artist run spaces, biennials and festivals around the world over two decades.