Tracy McBride, Elemental at Safehouse Two, Peckham, London, SE15 – Oct 5th/6th 2024 – The reason for being in Peckham yesterday was the Collapse show at Safehouse Two, that and to catch the  Sam Mills exhibition at Rebbit but could that be found in the warren that is the Bussey Building? No of course not, get some signing sorted people! Tell us where you are (they were probably sitting inside sulking about no one coming to the show, galleries are their own worst enemies at times or are the general public an inconvenience, i often get the idea that there are with some spaces)

As was said at the end of the Collapse piece a page back, the temptation is to lump the two shows that are often happening side by side at Safehouse One and Two together in one review or piece, that would be very wrong this week, Tracy McBride’s Elemental really does deserve a piece dedicated just to it, as does Collapse, Tracy’s show happening next door, both well worth your time… Both shows end on Sunday 6th October.

Now you would think a show in a house in Peckham, South East London, a rather fallen down part of the capital city, wouldn’t be the place of Tracy McBride’s Elemental, it is though, partly because of the very human nature of the exhibition and partly because the artist has reacted to the building that is Safehouse, worked with it rather than just placed her art within it.  “The exhibition is the culmination of two years of study and considers the Anthropocene, and the impact human intervention on the landscape of the fens where I live, the implications of humanity’s interventions on the natural world”.

It is immediately a visually exciting show, it sounds rather good as well, the first darkened room hosting a film show and a rather beautiful hanging, the architecture of the land at one or at least in some kind of harmony with the architecture of the city or at least this small house and the sense of things that have been lived out in here –  “The architecture of land, sky and sea draws me into the deep contemplation of the vastness of the universe and our place in time. I feel the weight and wonder of millennia before me and a fear for what will come. Landscape, space and light trigger a showreel of emotion: joy, sadness, yearning, awe and loss that are explored across my subjects”.

There is a need to rush this piece, Elemental opened yesterday and ends today, Sunday October 6th (hey, these places aren’t cheap to hire for artists), I really would like to have far more time to expand on it all, there really is a lot of emotion conveyed, of spirit within. It is another rather powerful show, it tells us so much about Tracy and where she’s from, where we are from, what she sees, how she reacts, there’s some beautiful work in here.

“I live in Cambridge, UK and I am fascinated by the strange and beautiful landscapes that were created and transformed by drainage of the land and it’s subsequent intensive farming in East Anglia. Traces from the past remain: the ploughed fields are host to ghostly remnants of rivers, ancient water ways and silty deposits. Here lies a rich story buried within the land – or perhaps it is the legacy of what may come to be once again.  Water is a both a metaphor and a source of life within my work. I explore viscosity, translucency, and fluidity of my mediums and often add texture from site-specific material to my surfaces.

I work from initial sketches and photographs en plein air, then develop them in my studio, working at speed to capture the light and the feeling that ‘a sense of a place’ gives me, often on several pieces simultaneously. My work is an expression of what I feel, not a literal representation. I want my viewers to feel the energy of an environment and to contemplate our relationship with the natural world”.

Love how this show works with the space whilst remaining very much about the land, about the way out there beyond the city, love the way you can’t, at times, quite work out where the art ends and the building begins, love the power of it all, the organic spirit of it all, do go if you can, really is worth it… (sw)

Peckham Safehouse 1 and 2 are both found at 137 Copeland Road, Peckham, London SE15 3SN. Iimagine the show goes on until about 5pm as does the excellent Collapse group show next door, both are rather recommended – Tracymcbrideartist.com / Instagram

As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…