Bold Tendencies is a seasonal sculpture exhibition, events venue and bar — in overall effect, a sort of hipster adventure playground — concealed in the disused upper levels of the multistorey car park opposite Peckham Rye railway station.
Bold Tendencies is a seasonal sculpture exhibition, events venue and bar — in overall effect, a sort of hipster adventure playground — concealed in the disused upper levels of the multistorey car park opposite Peckham Rye railway station. It recently opened for its fifth year, and it has become one of the regular joys and oddities of the metropolitan summer.
The tone is set this time with a slogan in fluorescent lights by Mircea Cantor, ‘MORE CHEEKS THAN SLAPS’, hung out above Rye Lane and made newly poignant by the riot damage beneath it. The other exhibits, once you have made your way through the car park to find them, tend to the aggressively playful. There is a replica of Del Boy’s Reliant Robin, which allegedly ‘considers the complex relationship a community may develop with its reputation and representation’. There is a pair of giant inflatable singing rats, less uncanny than you would imagine any such thing could be.
The main attractions, though, remain non-artistic: the rooftop bar — a wooden, fabric-canopied affair with the feel of a private festival, right down, sadly, to the toilets — and the view. The view is magnificent. From the cranes of Stratford to the chimneys of Battersea Power Station, the spires, domes and towers of central London are visible with scarcely an interruption. I haven’t seen a better perspective on the city, and I speak as someone who regularly cycles over Westminster Bridge at dawn. You have until 30 September to check it out.
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