Winding up into Bold Tendencies via the many floors of a multi-storey car park both removes the viewer from street level Peckham whilst thrusting one deep into the forlorn London sky. It is this initial entrance which timelessly sets the automatic dramaturgic moment of the show's pace and movement. The trajectory of Bold Tendencies reflects its south London grassroots with a happenstance curatorial ethos - part group show and part biennial-style sculpture park experience. It boasts not just on-site and site specific sculpture work but a cafe - bar and hay-lined auditorium for screenings, talks and performances. The outline for Bold Tendencies is one which has a far-reaching astute optimism in its ability to create an ad-hoc meeting place as well as temporary art institution. With this in mind the methodology is more of a mash-up or cut-up of different theoretical concerns, interests and coming and goings.

As an ignorant newbie to the story of Bold Tendencies I find myself entertaining the initial impression of the build and creation of the show with both awe and exhilaration. It's hard not to get carried away by the brutalist architecture and roof-top environment whilst trying to contemplate the work and read the show. On consideration the decision to use this location as a resting place for Bold Tendencies brings to mind the time-honoured (and crushingly predictable) east Vs south London art-critic critique; leaving in its wake a place that doesn't truly underscore what Bold Tendencies both achieves and strives to maintain as a large-scale art project.

Solely pioneering work made this year the expanse of Bold Tendencies makes for a space where walls and partitions become redundant, leaving in their wake a place for work to meld and mould into one another; sometimes awkwardly, sometimes with surprising results.

As an opening gambit Untitled by Eva Berendes choreographs a formalist welcome to the show whilst at the same time dumbing-up the associative resplendence of the shows interior-exterior spectacle. The collaboration of steel and line makes for an inside-out representation of fragility in the face of brutality - especially with regards to Ripper Teeth by James Capper situated on the next floor-up. Both Berendes and Capper seem to un-forgive the imperialism of structure with Berendes revoking the readable privilege of design in the face of instilling abstraction. With this in mind Capper’s work pushes deeper into the role of functionality by the presentation of 6 utilitarian claws a-top astutely crafted light-boxes. Both Berendes and Capper's comments seem to lie in the ability for humanity to applaud and be seduced by production in the face of an un-tangible relationship to the post-modern.

If the design and lust for the new becomes the by-word for the tendency of the bold then Rachel Champion's Economies of Scale lies as an ode to the reality of the will-to-function. The rooftop garden purports a quasi-sustainability rendering the challenge of the contemporary as one tethered to growth. With this in mind the action of this work or project marks a significant shift in the politics of the present as a dawn for consumer imperialism. The hallmark for this crisis is suggestively teased into place by Champion's ability to allude to the obsession of production through the representation of free-will and the guise of self-sufficiency. If self-sufficiency moves to become the bi-word for the dynamic urban dweller then the work of David Brooks remonstrates this practice in equal measure; Adaptable Boardwalk (with three genetic drifts) upsets the relationship between human and environment by lasciviously unpacking the point of man and nature as one laboured by structure and an obsession to control. By dismantling the paradigm of the parochial man-made ecological environment Brooks questions our relationship to our surroundings through suspicion and the ability to lose the privilege humanity seeks by design hierarchy.

As an overarching concern, the challenge of how to respond to such a loud space resides in the phenomenological work of Lilah Fowler Tube : Fencing a complimentary work designates a space of association for the building to work with and against the show. The platitude of the car park is brought into focus by the simple yellow lines of the fencing work and floor-based painted steel-sheet oval. Rejecting the buildings aggression in this manner not only reminds the viewer not to be seduced by its brutality but also manages to argue the tattered history of representation as a space for more much-needed articulation. Both Tube and Fencing lie either upright against the wall or flat against the ground, inverting the need to battle with the surrounds. By working in time with the car park Fowler relinquishes the power of the building by playing it at it's own structural game.

As each work handles the space and timing of Bold Tendencies, the outcome is one that shifts the idea of the 'new' back into the face of the real or present condition to find an impossible conclusion to the truth of our surroundings. The call and response of the show creates a space for a breakdown in the trust we place in our ability to find a reason for the condition of the real, the terror inherent being one which lasts out the day-to-day as unending but chaotically consequential.

Sophie Risner