Many of my most memorable art experiences in recent years have taken place in and above a multi-storey car park in Peckham, south London. In 2018, in sheeting rain against a wraparound backdrop of London’s night skyline, my eyes and mind were boggled by Benedict Cumberbatch reading theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time (2017), accompanied by a sound-and-light installation by Es Devlin, which culminated in an eruption of fireworks. Then, last year, in the raw concrete chamber of level 9, there was the astonishing spectacle of Oliver Leith’s processional work Garland, featuring supermarket trolleys, opera singers, community choirs, a Steinway piano and a live carthorse. And I will also never forget the chill and thrill of Eve Stainton’s prowling performance last summer, set to a full orchestral rendition of Ennio Morricone’s score for John Carpenter’s cult sci-fi horror film The Thing (1982).
Oliver Leith’s processional work Garland, part of Bold Tendencies’ 2025 programme Courtesy Bold Tendencies; © Dan John Lloyd
All of the above and a great deal more were commissioned by Bold Tendencies, the pioneering not-for-profit arts organisation that celebrates its 20th anniversary on the top-floor levels of the Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park this year. Up on its panoramic rooftop I’ve also passed through Anthea Hamilton’s 2010 portal, cut through a giant photograph of a man’s splayed legs; hurtled down Harold Offeh’s 2021 sculptural slide, which was adorned with flaming eyeballs in tribute to the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra; and fallen from Gray Wielebinski’s 2022 bucking mechanical bull.
Over two decades, Bold Tendencies has grown from a DIY endeavour in a condemned building to a major organisation that has welcomed more than three million visitors. It now has a lifetime lease on its car-park home and a world-renowned multidisciplinary commissioning programme, while running an extensive creative learning scheme within the local community—and has been instrumental in putting the low-income district of Peckham firmly on the cultural map. “Bold Tendencies is a world of its own,” declares its founder and artistic director Hannah Barry. “I think of it as a social force and memory palace; it’s a special place of magical transformation, a beyond-the-limits place.”
Es Devlin’s The Order of Time (2018) Courtesy of Bold Tendencies; photo: Peter Landers Photography
Barry was a 23-year-old art history graduate when she set up Bold Tendencies. She had been helping friends put on shows in a semi-derelict house in the neighbourhood and had befriended the Southwark Council officer in charge of disposable properties. “There was no real purpose,” she remembers. “I liked the thrill of going into something empty and unused.” But Peckham car park had a particular impact: “I was struck by the height and the length of the building, the rawness of the concrete indoor spaces and the sensation of being up in the air, aware of the changing conditions of light and weather, the city all around.”
Beacon effect
Another factor influenced Barry’s decision to put art into such a challenging place. She’d recently visited Dia Beacon in New York state and recalls becoming “completely head over heels obsessed with the space and the nature, and how the minute you arrive you are in a different atmosphere.” Back in Peckham, she felt the same frisson. “I thought this has a very similar expanse of space stretching both ahead and behind me. It also puts you in a different zone.”
An installation view of the Bold Tendencies Euphoria anniversary show on the roof of the car park Courtesy of Bold Tendencies © Damian Griffiths
It has been no mean feat making such an exposed site accommodating to visitors, art and music without compromising its raw grittiness. “We did a lot of acoustic modelling,” Barry says. Concrete chambers are still open along both sides—the sound of trains shunting in and out of nearby Peckham Rye station is a feature of each event—but the sound quality is now sufficient for Steinway to lend its top concert-grade instruments, as it has been doing since 2016.
Other distinguishing features include the rooftop Frank’s Café, which, with its distinctive red tarpaulin roof, has now become a landmark in its own right. Then there’s the intensely immersive bubblegum-pink painted staircase, itself a commissioned work by Simon Whybray, which was an early Instagram sensation when it was unveiled in 2016. Snaking across the entire surface of the roof, meanwhile, are the sinuous silver coils of Richard Wentworth’s Agora, a floor painting that, since 2015, has reflected everything taking place on and around it.
Every year, all the multifarious strands are knitted together by an overall theme, and the one chosen for its 20th anniversary is Euphoria. Wide ranging as ever, 2026 commissions include a billboard-sized Andreas Gursky photograph of surging nightclub ravers; Emma Hart’s ceramic Last Chance Saloon installation; and a full orchestral rendition of Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor. Barry and her team define Euphoria as “a communism of the emotions that has the power to uplift our souls, ignite revolutions and redefine social bonds”. Happy Birthday, Bold Tendencies! Here’s to many more decades of doing all of the above.
• Euphoria, Bold Tendencies, London, until 12 September
