Matt’s Gallery announces a New Trustee

Eddie says: I’m extremely happy to be joining the board of Matt’s Gallery, an entirely unique platform. It has created its own eco system- a model all of its own for what a gallery can be and how it can exist. That is reflected in its programme which is consistently adventurous, experimental and inventive, qualities I believe in as intrinsic to what contemporary art should be. At this moment in particular, when most galleries seem to aspire to assimilate to a homogenous model - one that is beholden to a commercial system and the whimsy of that system’s zeitgeists and trends - the sense of individuality and radicality engendered by Matt’s Gallery is invaluable and gives me hope.

Eddie Peake’s art 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.

The exhibition is where ostensibly fragmented elements come together and sing from the same song sheet, sometimes in ways that seem cohesive and inevitable, other times incongruous and surprising: brightly coloured oil paintings with 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; looping sound works composed of digitally manipulated scripted voices.

Eddie also DJs under a pseudonym, runs a record label called Hymn and occasionally publishes writing in books, periodicals and as exhibition accompanying texts. He has exhibited in galleries, museums, institutions, artist-run & nonprofit spaces, festivals and art fairs around the world for twenty years, and regularly participates in group shows, solo shows and projects internationally.

Matt's Gallery Director, Robin Klassnik says:
Eddie is going to be another great link in the chain of artists who have joined and sat on our Board of Trustees over the years. I am delighted to be working with him.

Matt’s Gallery would like to thank our other Trustees for their work: Ashleigh Barice, Abdullahi Bashe, Chloe Carroll, Gabriel Coxhead, Jes Fernie (Chair), Teresa Grimes, Robin Klassnik, and Rosie Reed