EAST END PROMISE 1985/2000 - A Story of Cultural Migrants

East End Promise 1985/2000

A Story of Cultural Migrants Saturday 9th - Sunday 24th October 2010 Exhibition Catalogue Londonewcastle Project Space • 28 Redchurch Street • Shoreditch • E2 7DP

A celebration of the artistic flowering that began in the East End of London in the 1980s

East End Promise: A Story of Cultural Migrants 1985-2000 Catalogue of an Exhibition curated by Ernesto Leal and Paul Sakoilsky • 9 - 24 October 2010 Londonewcastle Project Space•28 Redchurch Street London East End Promise celebrates the ever-changing visual and cultural landscape with particular emphasis on the ‘cultural migrants’ who made this area their home from the early 80s onwards. Many artists and musicians moved into the derelict, industrial area to the east of the city in the 80s and early 90s with a do-it-yourself ethos which had as much to do with necessity as choice. They turned warehouses into galleries, squats into raves and ‘The Ditch’, as it was once known, into the sub-cultural Mecca it is today.

We view these ‘migrants’ (artists, musicians, bar/club owners, writers, designers, architects and developers, gallerists, curators and freeloaders) as having a trans-historical alliance with all those who came before – part of a continuous migration and diaspora into/out of the East End. The latter as a huge sprawling studio: an experiment in living and working in a disorderly, messy, heterogeneous and evolutionary way.

The exhibition assembles for the first time, individuals, groups and spaces from different occupations and different timelines, past, present and future. It takes the form of a multi-layered installation, including art, photography, film/ video, music, text, audio, archival and architectural elements, contemporary publications and ephemera.

30 Underwood St Gallery • Tim Abbott • Chris Allen (The Light Surgeons) • Arthrob/ Tomato • Atlas Press • Howie B • Tim Bailey • Keith Ball • BANK • Andy Barklem • Paul Barkshire • Bass Clef/Blue Note • Simon Bill • James Birch • Andreas Bleckmann • Bonieventure • Paul Bradshaw/Straight No Chaser • David Brock/Luca Donadoni • Gail Burton • Brian Cannon/Microdot • Andrew Capstick • Alex Chappel • Mark Chivers • Cedric Christie • Darren Coffield • Commercial Gallery • Commercial Too • Joshua Compston/Factual Nonsense • Andrew Cooper • Michael Curran • Curtain Road Arts • Deborah Curt • Adam Dant • Sean Dawson • Lucy Day • Cathy de Monchaux • The Ditch Magazine • Fee Doran aka Mrs Jones • Liam Duke • Decima Gallery • Alison Dunn • Everything Magazine • Gordon Faulds • Noel Faulkner • Diego Ferrari • Five Years Gallery • Vanessa Fristedt • Mel Gaffney • Roslyn Gaunt • Bruce Gilchrist • Chris Greenwood • Alexander Guy • C. A. Halpin • Mark Hammond • Falk Hirdes • Stewart Home • Patrick Hughes • Marc Hulson • The Indo • Dick Jewell • James Johnston • Mark Jones • Justin (Dragon Bar) • Michael Kerr • Kate Kotcheff • `Ernesto Leal • Peter Lewis • Lo Recordings • Peter Locker • Jamie McDonald • Sean McLusky/Martin Tickner • Jason Manning • Marco • Phil Maxwell/Hazuan Hashim • Steve Micalef • Matt Mitchell • MJT • Giles Moberly • Pav Mxski • Richard Niman • Hermann Nitsch • No Nose • Normski • Dermot O’Brien •

Imogen O’Rorke • Derek Ogbourne • Ray Okusnubi • Anthony Oliver • Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE • Douglas Park • Esther Planas • Danny Pockets • PYMCA/Sleaze Nation • Brendan Quick • Vinny Reunov (Attache Gallery) • Kirsten Reynolds • Martin Richman • Jamie Robinson • Jason Royce • Joseph Sakoilsky • Paul Sakoilsky • Martin Sexton • Chris Shaw • Alexander Snelling • Tina Spear • Stimulus Ltd • Jessica Stein • Michael Stubbs • Geraldine Swayne • Swifty • Duncan Telford • Katie Tomasaevski • Suzanne Treister • Chris Tupper • Gavin Turk • Mole Vessey • Dougie Wallace • Piers Wardle • Eliott Waters • Andrew Waugh • Simon Wheatley • Winston Whitter • Peter Williams • Michael Yee-Chong And archive material – photographs, videos, publications, epherma – featuring just about everyone, the bold, the beautiful and the damned, from the East End art and cultural scene 1985-2000.

East End Promise Editorial Disclaimer It was always an insane idea, and it was Ernesto’s idea. To do a catalogue in ten days from start to finish, while the show was on. And in Frieze Art Week, of all weeks.

We hold all of the artists and contributors to this catalogue and exhibition in the very highest regard, and with the deepest possible affection.

We should have wished, more than anything, to do them all the honour which they deserve: to scrupulously credit and date each and every one of their contributions, and to arrange those contributions sensitively and intelligently. But we have been forced to operate in quite exceptional circumstances – to say the least – and with the most ridiculous time constraint possible. The material for this catalogue (to our delight) has been coming in from all quarters – last-minute emails, text/sms, phone calls. But it has been coming in at the very moment at which the show was being made. All efforts, all energies had to be directed to doing justice to the show itself.

And now the time is up. The designer waits, the printer waits. That’s it, there is simply no more time. A couple of months could easily have been spent compiling this catalogue, but the challenge which Ernesto set has left us with only a few days to complete this work. This makes mistakes and omissions inevitable.

Ernesto thinks that this constraint will result in a catalogue reflecting the energy and ingenuity of the time and place which the exhibition seeks to celebrate and expose.

You decide.

Yours truly and utterly and totally exhaustedly, Paul Sakoilsky – Editor With deepest respect and thanks to Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, and my dear daughter Anastasia.

16 October 2010, 8.30 am (all nighter).

Over to you Rogan … ”I am certified insane, this lot crossed the border into total insanity.”

Rogan Jeans, Arnold Circus, 1942 (I knew this was going to happen).

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 3

19/10/10 06:01:25

DONALD PARSNIPS’ DAILY JOURNAL 1995-1999 A pocket-sized, eight page photocopied pamphlet

to the traditional Fleet Street method totalled

‘Donald Parsnips’ Daily Journal’ (1995-1999) was

1,044,000.

by turns, an authentic echo of the English 17th century pamphleteering tradition, a bizarre dada-ist

Always Millennial in intent, Donald Parsnips’ Daily

intervention, a tatty comic book, an evangelical tract,

Journal ended its 5 year life in Berlin, marking the end

a situationist provocation, an unsolicited annoyance,

of the 20th century with a call (by fax) to the offices

occasionally profound, often delightfully rendered,

of most major news corporations requesting that they

often a garbled scrawl. It was French, German,

mark the event by publishing entirely blank editions

Japanese and no language whatsoever, Donald

of their newspapers. This demand was not met but

Parsnips was most often found scrumpled up in the

it did find Donald Parsnips being called on by The

pockets and purses of the London ‘Art Crowd’ as they

Independent on Sunday who appointed him as the

staggered home from another DIY, post-recession,

paper’s fictitious culture correspondent.

‘Brit-Art’ private-view.

The peripatetic nature of Parsnips operations, BBC Issued from ‘Donald Parsnips’ City Desk’ adjacent

Radio 4 referred to the Daily Journal as ‘bus-top

to London’s financial heart, in the once quasi-

publishing’, as well as its method of distribution,

bohemian neighbourhood of Shoreditch, artist Adam

precluded even the most determined archivist, though

Dant working under the nom de plume ‘Parsnips’,

many tried, from acquiring a complete back catalogue

would compose, print, fold and bind 100 copies of

of Donald Parsnips Daily Journal. None exists. When

the eponymous journal every morning. The work of

Paul Hedge of Hales Gallery London, dug out from

the fictitious, bespectacled, big hatted and collared

Dant’s studio, an old accordion case filled with the

‘Parsnips’ would then be distributed ‘On The Breeze’

antique box files that contained the original artwork

directly to a suspicious, unwitting and curious

and ephemera of Parsnips’ Journal the general

readership that was comprised of whoever the artist

disarray resulting from 5 years of continuous and

happened to pass by as he journeyed on foot to Old

regular production without any systematic archiving

Bond Street, where he worked as an assistant at

set a daunting task, if a comprehensive overview of the Daily Journal was to be realised. The artwork for the Daily Journals took a number of different forms, some days it was rendered on

Agnew’s Old Master Picture Gallery.

specially printed templates of a standard size whilst,

In the London that existed before ‘Free Sheets’, viral

written and drawn on all manner of materials, tracing

and guerrilla advertising, ubiquitous mobile-phone and internet use, the chat-room and ‘the tweet’ Donald Parsnips’ Daily Journal fulfilled its brief of using the methods and ethos of the fine artist to occupy the space where ‘mediation’ occurred. As the legend on its masthead read, Donald Parsnips’ Daily Journal was ‘Always of the now, for the then

more often than not, they vary in scale and format, paper, papyrus, metro maps, and old newspapers or hidden within the end papers of textbooks.

It is thus with great excitement that Hales Gallery and Adam Dant present the collected works of Donald Parsnips’ Daily Journal boxed in their entirety. This early work places Dant’s similarly monumental large

and with thorough referrals to the other’.

ink drawings into a clear context. The format of

It frequently and deliberately caused consternation.

printed ephemera, whilst the evident humour, visual

One copy was returned to the Donald Parsnips’ City Desk torn up into tiny pieces. Its distribution was banned from a Texan shopping Mall, whilst in Berlin and Cairo its presence led to a fortnight of free cocktails and fish dinners respectively. It spawned a school of followers such as ‘Arnold Turnips’, ‘Henry Bibby’s Dagblad’ and Liverpool’s ‘Milly Tint’. Its readership, on cessation, when calculated according

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 4

the Daily Journal emphasising his love of vintage satire and wordplay refers to a continuing influence of printmakers such as Hogarth, Gilray and Dore, hacks such as Defoe, Addisson and Steele, as well as the methods of movements such as Dada, Fluxus, Situationism and The Oulipo.

ADAM DANT

19/10/10 06:01:32

Alexander Guy •‘The Conqueror’ 1998 The “Conqueror” was an international multi-media art extravaganza involving two locations, one, a dirty little twenty four hour east end drinking den the other, a sumptuous luxurious baroque Italian palace situated in the foothills of the Italian Alps near the historical and beautiful city of Turin named Castello de Rivara. The pub was called the Conqueror.

This project included 15 portrait paintings of fellow drinkers in this bar being exhibited in the museum at Rivara. It also involved taking the subjects of these portraits from Shoreditch on a long, long bus journey to the Castle where they were guests at the opening of the exhibition the “Conqueror”. This whole episode was filmed by a New York film crew up until the point that they could suffer no more. I sacked them in Turin. Apparently the film the “Conqueror” was made but I surprisingly never heard from the film team ever again. All in all the “Conqueror” was a cross-cultural triumph where the mink clad art lovers of Turin were confronted not only by the paintings but their subjects also. This caused an international incident and I wasn’t asked to show there again. The paintings remain as a legacy of a special moment in East London folklore circa 1997/98.

The bar was shut down shortly after and remains so.

It still stands empty today and if one peers through the filthy windows one can still hear the racket, the mayhem, the laughter and general pandemonium that used to pervade from its welcoming dark, drunken, drug fueled, e soaked, coke filled interior.

The “Conqueror” is an iconic symbol of East London riotous Hogarthian celebration of a time before the invasion of the outsiders.

Bruce Gilchrist A Way Of Asking For Reasons Ques: A short quote of no more than 25 words describing ‘your’ East End. Ans: What the fuck happened?

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 5

19/10/10 06:02:04

Too Close To The Sun see the scene depicted in the picture except perhaps

from this on the roof of the car. They cut his clothes

ten minutes earlier. Ten minutes earlier, Mole had

off with surgical scissors and eventually took him

1998 (I think). I lived on Charlotte Road next to the

not been cut out of his clothes by paramedics. Ten

away. Mole was alive.

Cantaloupe. Back in the day on Friday/Saturday, this

minutes earlier, Mole lay on the roof of the old Merc

was the Frontline.

motionless and I assumed must be dead. I vaguely

Apparently, the Merc had only been parked there a

knew Mole from the Bricklayers. It was spine

few minutes. The driver was picking something up

We lived next door to where Joshua Compston used

chilling. The helicopter buzzed overhead but the

and was about to leave again. Without that classic

to live and so the place was already thick with history.

ambulance had not yet arrived. This must have been

old Merc and its flimsy sunroof, Mole would not have

minutes after Mole fell off the roof from a height of

made it.

Here’s the story...

After a night I’d been editing very late, I woke up

what must have been approaching 100 feet. I couldn’t

early to the sound of a helicopter low and directly

look but then had to look. The ambulance arrived.

over my flat. Tired and groggy from the night before,

They gave him oxygen and they punctured his chest

I got up and looked out of my fourth story window to

cavity just under the armpit - you can see the blood

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 6

Alexander Snelling

19/10/10 06:02:14

Our playground until the property developers came.

Alistar Brotchie

Hackney had everything we were after, space, freedom, and a police force with better things to do than harass us. Living in yards in the city was good for us, the kids ruled,they always had the best playground.

I remember hackney wick market,the whole world was trading there,you could get anything,it was amazing.

Ali Dunn

Atlas Press: The Rebel at the Foundary

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 7

19/10/10 06:02:45

Andreas Bleckmann

Sean McLusky• SONIC MOOK EXPERIMENT @ 333 OLD ST Sean McLusky was the first promoter to discover the 333 club on Old Street, in what was then the very run down, quiet district called Shoreditch, (you couldn’t find a shop for cigarettes or even a taxi home) Vicky the owner had just been persuaded by Pablo Flack to change the venue from the infamouse gay cruse pub The London Apprentice to a looser party venue for all. It was there McLusky created his bastard offspring the ‘Sonic Mook Experiment’ pioneering the practice of multi-room, multi sound, musical eclecticism, and becoming a runaway success, attracting hoards of disaffected youths to this forgotten quarter of London. Unconventional and unpredictable Sonic Mook Experiment attracted a ‘stunning mix of loyal radical chic cognoscenti’ (Time Out) but with awful/ ‘ironic’ Djs playing power ballads and rock anthems (like resident Blind Olly Soft Rock) plus a mix of live bands, guest DJ’s and DJ musicians like Mark E Smith (The Fall), Jimmy Pursey (SHAM69), Dee Dee Ramone, Alan Vega (Suicide). People dispensed with the pretensions and conventions of the West End and came to sample the new East End in what has been cryptically described by Loaded magazine as ‘an eclectic Capri of madness - driven by the insane’. Sonic Mook Experiment grew in infamy at the 333 Club in Shoreditch from1996 to1999, becoming part of the basis on what the area has come to represent and the catalyst for the attitude now found in the area.

Editor’s note: An impressively highly wrought piece of writing by Steve Beale and Sean McLusky accompanied this piece – the eixgencies of time, with 5 mins to go to the designer/printers, made it impossible to edit it with the care it deserves.

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 8

19/10/10 06:04:07

Andrew Cooper In 1998, from looking at a dogs skull, Kane created what he called “The Seven Beloved Sheep”. Kane, a child in a school in EC2, known to be problematic in his relationships with others, shocked me by producing a drawing with a complex labyrinth of mythology inscribed over the grubby surface of the cartridge paper around seven animal skulls, alive with dense graphite and sweat.

I myself was working in seclusion in the back-room of my Peabody flat so I ‘existed’ elsewhere.

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 9

19/10/10 06:04:16

Andrew WAugh

Andy Barklem

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 10

19/10/10 06:05:03

Anthony oliver • ‘the making of idiot’ hoxton sq 1995

Derek Ogbourne I remember Un-TV, Warhol and Beuys opening at Antony Offay just before they died, Bank TV, Sharp suits, Coach and Horses, shit can’t think…

Gordon Faulds The word snug perfectly describes feelings of contentment… nurture. Great enterprise and creativity emerges from this place.

This was the Shoreditch I knew between 1985-1996/97.

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 11

19/10/10 06:05:10

Arthrob Arthrob began life in 1995 as a vehicle to organise

claustrophobic setting. The event was directed by

events to provide innovative book launches for Irvine

Jan-Van Den Bosch and as well as Bill Drummond

Welsh and Hanif Kureshi. The goal was to bring

there were performances by Iain Sinclair, Miranda

culture into nightclubs and clubs into culture. Arthrob

Sawyer, Neil Bartlett, Bella Black, Hanif Kureshi, Ben

events were untidy affairs but the chaos heightened

Richards and Tam Dean Burn.

the immediacy and excitement.

One event involved a tour bus of novelists on a ‘rock The organisation was defined by their cross-genre

and roll’ literary road trip under the banner Defining a

events, presenting art for the “chemical generation”.

Nation, funded by the Arts Council.

A typical event would involve theatre, book readings, bands and fine arts together with DJs and dancing.

In 1997 Arthrob founded a record label backed by

Visual installations were often provided by graphic

Warner Bros. Records offshoot Coalition Recordings,

design studio Tomato.

releasing an eclectic roster of artists from the contemporary classical music of Michael Gordon to

In 1998 they devised and, in conjunction with the

Pelirocco, Fini Dolo, Towa Tei with Kylie Minogue,

Random Collective produced seven theatre events in

Silva Bullet, Crude Reality, Hubert Hudson and Belle

one afternoon in seven different venues around east

Mouki, Glamorous Hooligan, Daz-i-kue, Sonja Sohn,

London in celebration of the Bertolt Brecht centenary.

Girl Talk, Frantic Language, Fonda Rae, Da Lunartiks,

Entitled The Seven Deadly Sins each site specific

Saul Williamson and The All New Accelerators. The

event took a different sin as its theme. The venues

label also released a remix album of Steve Reich’s

were varied - Hoxton Hall, The Old Axe public house

music and a soundtrack compilation of classic acid

hosted a strip show; The Lux cinema, the old Hoxton

house to accompany Sarah Champion’s[5] collection

Boxing Club, St Monica’s Church hall and a former

of short stories ‘Disco Biscuits’.

Barclays Bank in Shoreditch High Street played host to a reading on greed by Bill Drummond though

Source wikepedia 2010

many of the audience couldn’t fit in this deliberately

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 12

19/10/10 06:06:06

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 13

19/10/10 06:06:47

BANK

A

HISTORY OF EAST END

BANKING

BANK WERE:

Simon Bedwell 1991-2003/ Milly Thompson 1993-2003 John Russell 1991 - 2000/Andrew Williamson 1993 - 1998 David Burrows 1993 - 1995/Dino Demosthenous 1991 - 1992 BANK's East End galleries were BANKspace, 3rd Floor, Burbage House, Curtain Road (1994-1995), and DOG, then Gallerie Poo Poo, at 34 Underwood Street (1996-1999).

THE east end SHOWS: SIMON BEDWELL & MILLY THO MPSON Store, Hoxton St, June 2003

BANK Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, Cambridge Heath Rd, March 2002 BANK@ChapmanFineARTS.cum.uk.unt Chapman Fine Arts, Fashion St, September 2001 WHITE 3 (BANK, Bethan Huws) Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, December 1998 WHITE 3 (BA N K, A rt & La ngua ge), Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, November 1998 WHITE3 (BANK, Lolly Batty), Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, October 1998

STOP SHORT-CHANGING US. POPULAR CULTURE IS FOR IDIOTS. WE BELIEVE IN ART! Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, July-August 1998 GALLERIE WINNER (BANK, Wayne Lloyd) Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, April 1998 PRESS RELEASE, Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, January 1999 MASK OF GOLD (Christy Astuy, Bank, David Burrows, Roddy Thomson & the Lowe Brothers, MargaritaGluzberg, Mark Jones, Peter Seymour, Eric Wright) Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, October 1997

WINKLE THE POT BELLIED PIG AND HIS WOODLAND CHUMS (Bank, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Minimal Club, John Cussans & Ranu Mukhergee, Michelle Griffiths, Russell Haswell) Gallerie Poo Poo, 34 Underwood St, June 1997 IT'S A STITCH-UP ! DOG, London, March 1997 GOD (Liz Arnold, BANK) DOG, London, April 1997

DOG-U-MENTAL VIII!!!

(Terry Atkinson, Bank, Dave Beech, David Burrows, Carina Diepens, Keith Farquar, Rebecca Howard, Michael Kay, Graham Ramsay, Fergal Stapleton, John Stezaker, Milly Thompson, Rebecca Warren, Wayne Winner) DOG, 34 Underwood St, December 1996

Viper/BANK TV (130 artists incl. Liz Arnold, Dave Beech, David Burrows, Tracey Emin, Michael Kay, Leeds United, Orphan Drift, Bob & Roberta Smith, Martin Vincent, Wayne Winner) DOG, 34 Underwood St, March 1996

FUCK OFF! (BANK, Lolly Batty, Gavin Turk, Rebecca Warren) DOG, 34 Underwood St, March 1996

COCAINE ORGASM (Tim Allen, Liz Arnold, Bank, Lolly Batty, Dave Beech, Simon Bill, John Cussans & Ranu Mukhergee, Stephen Glynn, Gerard Hemsworth, Simon Martin/Anna Mossman, Soren Martinsen, Muntean/Rosenblum, Chris Ofili, Janette Parris, John Stezaker, Michael Stubbs, Jessicca Voorsanger, Rebecca Warren, Max Wigram, Andrew Williamson) BANKSPACE, 34 Underwood St December 1995

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIG ADE

(BANK, Simon Bedwell, John Cussans & Colin Lane, Matthew Higgs, 0rphan.drift>, Ingrid Pollard, Bob & Roberta Smith),

BANKSPACE, Burbage House, Curtain Road, September 1959

ZOMBIE GOLF (BANK, Dave Beech, Adam Chodzko, Maria Cook, Martin Creed, Peter Doig, Matthew Higgs,Sivan Lewin, John Stezaker, cur Bank), BANKSPACE, Burbage House, Curtain Road April 1995

WISH YOU WERE HERE Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 14

(Simon Bedwell, Sonia Boyce, David Burrows, The Cabinet Gallery, Lucy Gunning, Anne Lislegaard, Matt Mitchell, Ian Pratt, John Russell, Bob & Roberta Smith, Milly Thompson, Andrew Williamson, cur Bank), BANKSPACE, Burbage House, Curtain Road, September 1994

19/10/10 06:07:31

Ranu Mukhergee, Stephen Glynn, Gerard Hemsworth, Simon Martin/Anna Mossman, Soren Martinsen, Muntean/Rosenblum, Chris Ofili, Janette Parris, John Stezaker, Michael Stubbs, Jessicca Voorsanger, Rebecca Warren, Max Wigram, Andrew Williamson) BANKSPACE, 34 Underwood St December 1995

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIG ADE

(BANK, Simon Bedwell, John Cussans & Colin Lane, Matthew Higgs, 0rphan.drift>, Ingrid Pollard, Bob & Roberta Smith),

BANKSPACE, Burbage House, Curtain Road, September 1959

ZOMBIE GOLF (BANK, Dave Beech, Adam Chodzko, Maria Cook, Martin Creed, Peter Doig, Matthew Higgs,Sivan Lewin, John Stezaker, cur Bank), BANKSPACE, Burbage House, Curtain Road April 1995

WISH YOU WERE HERE (Simon Bedwell, Sonia Boyce, David Burrows, The Cabinet Gallery, Lucy Gunning, Anne Lislegaard, Matt Mitchell, Ian Pratt, John Russell, Bob & Roberta Smith, Milly Thompson, Andrew Williamson, cur Bank), BANKSPACE, Burbage House, Curtain Road, September 1994

…AND ALSO: THE LITT LE S HOP ON HOXTO N ST REET

Caline Aoun, BANK, Marc Bauer, Vanessa Billy, Ben Cain, Stella Capes, Alice Channer, Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth, Lucy Clout, Chris Evans, Tom Gidley, Sean Edwards, Aurelien Froment, Josephine Flynn, Ryan Gander, Hanson and Sonnenberg, Claire Harvey, Matthew Harrison, Dan Holdsworth, Gemma Holt, The Hut Project, Adrià Julià, Liz Neal, Andrew Rucklidge, Giorgio Sadotti, Matthew Smith, Jack Strange, Adam Thomas, Yonatan Vinitsky, and Bedwyr Williams,

LIMONCELLO, Hoxton St, 2008/FAST &

LOOSE(My Dead Gallery) (New Vision Centre:1956-66, Signals: 64-66, London Free School:66, Indica:65-67, Arts Lab:67-69, Gallery House:72-73, The Gallery:72-78, 2B Butler's Wharf:75-78, Fantasy Factory:75-96, Art Meeting Place:74-76, B2:79-84, NeTWork 21:86, The Women's Art Library/Make:82-2002, workfortheeyetodo:92-98, BANK: 91-03; Cur. Centre of

FRASS

Fieldgate Gallery, London, July 2006/ (Bank, Simon Bill, Simon Bedwell & Milly Thompson, Dinos Chapman, Jake Chapman, Nigel Cooke, Critical Decor, David Falconer, Levin Haegele, Russell Haswell, Chris Jones, Jonathon Meese, Rebecca Warren: cur. David Falconer),UBS Bullion Vault, Attention)

City, October 2003/DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT FROG WHO WANTED TO BE A PRINCE? HE WENT TO A BED AND DREAMED THAT HE WAS ONE... WOKE UP AND FOUND THAT HE HAD BECOME ONE. HE WAS STILL A FROG (Simon Bedwell, Bank, Barry Reigate, Gillian Carnegie, Jake & Dinos Chapman Margarita Gluzberg, Richard Kern, Alistair MacKinven, Simon Thompson; cur. Simon Thompson/Barry Reigate), Club Egg, York Way, June 2003 NIHILISM/FAITH(Charles Avery, BANK, Edward Lipski, Bob and Roberta Smith, Milly Thompson, Mark Titchner, cur: Peter Harris), 47 Paul St, June 2003 CHOKKAFUCKINBLOKKA (Bank, Ian Davenport, Peter Davies, Gerard Hemsworth, Chantal Joffe, Wayne Lloyd, Martin Maloney, Lisa Milroy, John Russell, cur Matthew Collings, Fiona Rae, Jenny Saville), Jeffrey Charles Gallery, London, November 2003 IT’S ONLY WORDS mirror, Clerkenwell cur. Esther Windsor, PROJECT VALIS 291 Gallery. London cur. John Cussans,THE INK JETTY Neon Gallery, Commercial Rd cur JJ Charlesworth/M. Halusi, RECORD COLLECTION VTO, London, 2001 PROTEST &SURVI VE , Whitechapel Gallery, London, September 2000 DOT Group show Arthur R. Rose, London, June 2000 GRAPESHOT BULLSEYE HARVEST (Group show cur. Douglas Park), Attaché Gallery, London, 1997 BEACH LIFE (Group show cur. FAT), Upper Street, London, September 1997 CLASS VEGAS (Group show cur Dave Beech), The Embassy, London, October 1997 MY DARLING CICCIOLINA (Bank, Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed, Bob & Roberta Smith, Matthew Shadbolt), 114 Curtain Road,London, December 1995 THE ART CASINO(Bank, Hugo Glendinning, Mark Wallinger etc cur Annie Griffin), Barbican Art Gallery, April, 1995

Artist Pages Catalogue.indd 15

19/10/10 06:07:45

Bonieventure

The Bass Cleff (peter ind)

The Blue Note

Peter Ind was born on July 20, 1928 in Uxbridge

from Nuphonic HQ. By hosting ground-breaking

Middlesex. U.K. He played on the ship the Queen

residencies from the likes of DJ Harvey, Andrew

Mary (1949-51) before settling in New York (1951),

Weatherall, James Lavelle, Goldie’s ‘Metalheadz’,

where he taught, and performed and recorded with

Gille’s Peterson’s ‘Far East’, Talvin Singh’s ‘Anokha’,

Lennie Tristano (1951), Lee Konitz (1954-57), and

Mark Jones’s ‘WOS’, and Ninja Tune’s ‘Stealth’, the

Buddy Rich (1957).

venue became a catalyst that sparked-off an influx of

1992, saw Sav and Eddie Piller take charge of the Blue Note Club, 1 Hoxton Square, a few doors down

creatives into the area. The club was soon to become After living in New York came back to established

the main stay of everyones weekly social agenda

Wave in the UK in 1967. He set up Wave studios in

where people would meet regularly to exchange new

1981 as a recording facility in Hoxton Square (a run

musical formulas. Over the next 4 years, the venue

down area in East London still showing the effects of

grew to create a profound impact on the UK music

bomb damage). The new Wave premises eventually

and nightlife scene and was hailed by critics as one

became host to the jazz venue Bass Clef and Peter

of the most influential of its time.

continued his passion for recording.

Sav Remzi

Photograph by NORMSKI

Brendan Quick’s • mirrorballs Brendan Quick: fascinated by glamour and Pasolini,

narratives of those who are not given leading or

memorabilia. Impossible to list the good times they

Warhol and Fassbinder. At that time maker of

speaking roles.

reflected. Idiosyncratic highlights: 120 in the ICA

paintings and installations which appropriate the set design and shooting protocol of film sets.

main gallery (Fools Rain), Big Aesthetic Nothing (City Exhibited internationally in the 1990s. In museums,

Racing solo show), Tate Modern (Cerith Wyn Evans

galleries, and most especially nightclubs.

morse code), Porticus Frankfurt (Georg Herold’s

Mirrorballs. Early signature works. Spheres that are

“Plutocracy”, the largest of 120. Impeccable

Football Karaoke), an Elle Interiors feature on Gary

motifs for impossible utopias, especially the inner

credentials as both artwork and functional

Hume’s home, Shoreditch Town Hall…

C.A.Halpin • the river

cedric christie• ‘Documenta bootleg’

Photograph by Paul Sackoilsky

Chris Allen

Chris Greenwood • Cargo Cult After battling for a year with the most ridiculous action group ever (S.H.A.A.T.A.... Shoreditch Housing Association Against The Arches), who promised that we’d set up a haven for drug dealers who specialised in targetting young children, we got the green light.... but only if we triple glazed all the windows. And a whole bunch of other stupid conditions Banksy had recently painted under the bridge. We punched a hole through his mural to create the front entrance. He was mildly upset. Should have kept the bricks...

And now, after 9 years of amazing bands, djs, exhibitions, decent food and drink, Cargo is being gang raped every weekend. Should have kept the name...

Bitter, moi?

Chris Shaw • Early Foundry Story Not many people know it but the foundry was invented and founded by one man-MARK TEVERSON...anyway in 1998 I was walking past the foundry one day and i saw mark struggling to open the front door with his key..his staff had also been struggling to open the door but mark had been unavailable having been on a drunken binge for the previous four days.and the foundry had been closed... anyway we decided to get in through the back way which was underneath some shutters and through a carlift,this we did with some success..we were now in the basement of the foundry in the large room which was soon to host gideon white-cubes shermans inaugural exhibition..but a solid locked wooden door confronted us.the foundry used to be a bank..and it was pretty secure..not put off by this- the two of us picked up a rolled steel joist which was on the floor and started using this as a battering ram on the aforesaid door..the rolled steel joist was quite heavy and after half an hour the door gave way under our assault and and we were through to the upstairs of the foundry.demanding payment in kind I went behind the bar and was helping myself to a drink- mark opened the front door from the inside as he did so two people pushed past him, mark asked me to serve them -within half an hour the place was packed and I ended up working behind the bar until 2am.bastard.

Photograph by Chris Shaw

Commercial & Commercial Too I remember…arguing, mostly, about what art is or isn’t, was or wasn’t, and where to put it. but everyone just mucked in and got on with it. – Keith Ball.

Darren Coffield •Joshua Compston/Factual Nonsense It was one sleepy Sunday afternoon sitting in Joshua Compston’s bedroom by the Thames in Leafy Chiswick when he dropped the bombshell.

“I am going to move to the east end and start a gallery, an art movement to revolutionise the lives of the working classes” he announced with great aplomb.

Now Hoxton in those days was the antithesis of what Joshua saw as middle class consumerism and aesthetic corruption that riddled Chiswick and infact the whole of bourgeois West London as he saw it.

The entire country was just coming out of another recession in the early 1990’s suffering a tremendous hangover from a major property crash , Hoxton seemed a dilapidated and unpopulated place but to Joshua is was an undiscovered country. He settled on a former factory / workshop in a little back water called Charlotte Road, it was quite an unremarkable

street where the most remarkable things were destined to happen . At the top of the road was a miserable run down pub called the Bricklayers Arms which was closed at weekends due to a lack of punters. Joshua called his gallery “Factual Nonsense” named after a painting by one of his favourite painters.

The first exhibition at the gallery was called “A Guide for the perplexed’ and featured my artworks along with the painters David Taborn and Sam Crabtree.

Joshua commissioned a large poster to be printed by hand by Tom Shaw who was still operating one of the last letterpress print works, based on Commercial Road. The poster was designed to evoke everything Factual Nonsense stood for and included Joshua’s manifesto / tirade against society on the reverse side.

These posters were mailed out to all the Galleries, Cultural institutions etc, my Art Tutors at the Slade were perplexed by the posters for “A Guide for the

perplexed” not realising that they were indeed the ‘enemy’.

Less than Thirty people attended the opening night of Factual Nonsense. The gallery was filled with the artists friends and recent graduates from the Courtauld Institute. No one else wanted to brave a visit to this mysterious backwater called ‘Hoxton’ which wasn’t even on any transport maps. The irony of the Queen visiting Charlotte Road to open a drawing school for her son several years after Joshua’s death is not lost on me. Nor is the fact that the school was situated directly opposite The gallery where Joshua lived, suffered and met his untimely demise. I wonder what he would have made of it all.

Hoxton may have changed considerably over the last 20 years but one thing cannot change for Hoxton is the place where I lost my friend Joshua and I still miss him.

Alex Chappel (Decima Gallery) My first experience of the East End was before I had ever even visited London, it was 93, and was put in student Halls in Newcastle with David C West. He went off regularly, returning with bizarre and somewhat oblique stories of tea with Gilbert & George and his friend Joshua Compston’s wild pissups, and an unknown artist called Tracey Emin, who had written a poem called “When you’re drunk even being lonely doesn’t hurt”. Dave suggested I make a small film about Emin, as I was a film student, and I thought it was a good idea and so did she. By the

time I got round to moving to London properly in 97, Joshua was dead and Emin was (newly) famous... I was on my way to the lake district for a job interview as the head gardener in a hotel when I bumped into David C West on his way to Blackpool on the same train - I hadn’t seen him nor heard from him for at least 2 years. He took out a copy of a newspaper and two bottles of wine. There was a double-page spread in the Sunday Times about the Jack Duckworth Memorial Clinic, the fictitious clinic he and Joshua set up. Piers Wardle always ordered mustard with

his breakfast and stayed behind for at least 4 extra cups of tea in addition to the one that came with it.

Dave & I borrowed a pantomime cow from Derby Playhouse and performed at Gavin Turk’s Live Stock Market on Charlotte Street by giving kids cow rides.

By 98 we had our own cow named Diana and were doing regular cow tricks - including storming the Tate Gallery as suggested by Gilbert & George, Cow-ograms, and a trip from St Pauls for Diana.

Dick Jewell I remember a bunch of us would meet Micky and Margaret at pink Gorlston Street every Sunday afternoon. Mickey drove a Roller and Margaret a pink mk 1 consul convertible and we’d go off to Chinatown in Limehouse till the evening – there’d be people like Bobby Moore at the next table…

Diego Ferrari A meeting with Hermann Nitsch at 30 Underwood Street Gallery. 1997 The space is empty – the work still in the protecting wooden boxes, waiting to be arranged in Underwood Street Gallery. I exchange a word with Hermann Nitsch, who is staring at the wooden boxes and unwrapped objects, as he was saying to me, the complexity of exhibiting lies in its demand that a solidarity be established between the work on view and the architecture of the gallery. I turn around and as I step forward towards the pillar an exploding noise of bubble wrap is released in the pristine echoing space. Nitsch looks at me with piercing eyes; no damage is done. Action starts‌Decisions are taken and the work comes to be dispersed around the

gallery walls and floors. A dialogue has started to build up between one object and the other, between the imposed pillar of the building and the photograph left lying against it. The assistants are busy, Nitsch is apparently calm, but it is difficult to interact with him, as he is concentrating on a possible composition formed between the door, the photography and the empty left hand sidewall.

Meanwhile my camera has been tracking these diverse events, guided by the idiosyncrasies of the space. What directs my eye in every case is an appreciation of the fact that I’m documenting

Hermann Nitsch with his photographs depicting same of his performance works, waiting to be hanged on the walls of the gallery space. In the intervening time, the camera has been operating by focusing on a detail in the foreground, zooming in on one of the photographs, then a composition in the middle distance, bringing the separate distances of the space together, almost like a door in the movement of opening and closing.

The film keeps rolling inside the camera, as I represent the event in prolonged visual sentences, approaching the ephemeral compositions, the contradictions and subtle arrangements that take place as the work claims its place on the gallery.

Douglas Park 1967: David Medalla & Co’s “Exploding Galaxy”, commune and performance collective in Balls Pond Road. Studio co-ops and complexes, early 1970’s onwards Beck Road (ACME, SPACE, but not A.I.R?) studios with live-in houses. Most notaby: Genesis P’ Orridge and Co’s Coum Transmissions / Throbbing Gristle / Industrial Records/ Psychick T.V/ Theee Temple ov Theee Psychick Youth; Helen Chadwick (R.I.P.); Mikey Cuddihy etc. Since early 1970’s and even before that….Docklands scene (Andrew Logan+ Alternative Miss World, Zandra Rhodes, Derick Jarman, events, parties). 1979 onwards Robin Klassnik & Co’s Matt’s Gallery (at 10 Martello Street, also Throbbing Gristle “Death Factory”/ Industrial Studios).. Showroom (Bonner Road, mid 80’s). Another noteworthy presence = Gilbert & George (Art for All), based and active in Fournier Street, exclusively using the local visual vocabulary to embody their concerns (since late 60’s-early 70’s, then onwards). Anne Bean, Paul Burwell, Marty Saint James and Richard Wilson etc’s Bow Gamelan Ensemble (in memory of Stephen Cripps “pyromechanics”). Anthony Reynolds Gallery 1st opened in Cowper Street mid 1980’s. Kay Roberts (New Exhibitions of Contemporary Art listings) Actualities project space in Narrow Street, Docklands. (later where Simon Cutts, Erica Van Horn & Co’s workfortheeyetodo / Coracle Press were based when they returned to London). Others include…Early Chisenhale. Maureen Paley / Interim art in Beck Road. Flowers east (originally near Richmond Road Squats). By the early 90’s, the recession then recovery halted or just slowed down gentrification and property development. Many properties/ premises/ land/ buildings still belonging to the same families and companies as in much earlier (colonial / industrial) times. New money / companies / enterprise / vested interests / purpose serving. Corporation of London and other authorities. Joshua Crompston & Factual Nonsense. Dermot O’Brien and Co’s Curtain Road Arts.

Mark Jones’ Bedsit to Loft installation and live performance program – from which evolved Simon Hedges, Paul Sakoilsky and co’s Underwood Street Arts. Jonathan Hatt and Michael Crofts Annexed mid 90’s. 1996: LIFE / LIVE major survey of U.K. art curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Co, double volume book, including entries by and about many U.K. independent organizations -8 of which were invited to stage projects in Musee D’Arte Moderne de La Ville de Paris (later toured to Portugal). Interestingly enough, around the same time as being listed and appearing in LIFE / LIVE, many such organizations ended (due to losing spaces, funding or members, moving on, giving up etc). 1995: Chapman Bros, Nick Waplington and Co’s studio in Brick Lane. Lux Cinema in Hoxton Square (mid ‘90s- early millennium). Evolved out of merger with London Filmmakers Co-op (similar to London Musician’s Co-op becoming South Bank Centre’s Meltdown Festival also set-ups like Bookworks and Artangel etc), more recently since then LUX is now part of British Film Institute. Lux = London Filmaker’s co-op, merged with London Electronic Arts. London Filmmaker’s Co-op came out of 1960’s counterculture around Better Books (bookshop, gallery, meeting-place, event-space etc) scene in 1966. London electronic Arts very much took over / consumed / replaced the to-some-extent even-then still-alternative London Filmmaker’s Co-op. Mark Ærial Waller’s Glow Boys screening night with live concert by Mark E. Smith of The Fall was listed in the free newspapers and those involved made the effort to promote it -making it a relatively well-attended event for Lux. Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas “Shop” in 1993. Factual Nonsense’s The Fete Worse Than Death and other events 1992-’96. As well as Factual Nonsense’s gallery shows, Joshua Crompton and co also staged public festivities in the surrounding neighbourhood environs, whereby invited young Brit Art stars and others sold editioned multiples and also services. These became a meeting-point for various groups and scenes in co-operation with mutual support from local community and infrastructures. Memorable shows were 30 Underwood Street Arts outdoing what U.K. institutions and museums dared not -by showing the notorious veteran Viennese “Actionist”, Hermann Nitsch. Bank’s abusive curation and placement of selected exhibitor’s work (1994-98). Keith Farquar’s Gonzo show at the Old Fire Station in Bethnal Green Road. workfortheeyetodo showing Gustav Metzger after his return to the U.k, then their memorable launch for Atlas (@las!) press, ultimate version of Daniel Spoerri & co’s Anecdoted Topography of Chance collaborative and generative “Roman Nouveau” bookwork. What is strenuous to believe now, is, despite the increasingly computerised admin and digital graphic design, all promotion then was still mostly or only done by print and post, therefore publicity was another factor demanding advance-planning pre-event and ahead (as well as production and cost).

Circa 1995-’96 onwards, the beginning of increased intensity, bringing both energy and action but also an expanding burnout of potential. Intake and usage of alcohol and drugs multiplying. Corporate and financial factor, as well as funding host spaces and facilities…alcohol sponsorship! Anthony Fawcett… Becks/ Absolut/ Bombay Sapphire/ Gin/ J&B / Scottish Whisky, mutual promotion of artists and ventures -as well as alcohol brands. Back in the 1980’s (before this critical era), the hitherto unknown German Becks beer name was made when Becks sponsored U.K. public/ institution/museum/ space, shows of New work by living artists. Circa 1996-1997-1998.

Negation of State fundings (London Arts Board Etc)….. Dilemma options: at least attempt becoming more commercial and / or join the establishment and / or move on etc.

More new blood and faces “on the scene”. Brick Lane area. Alfred Camp / 97-99 projects in Sclater Street using Anthony Howell’s former Holyrood old leather market/ performance space. Void nextdoor, later used by Decima (most notably for their Daykin-Day , in honour of Mike daykin, with “Daykinisms”). Ambitious and enterprising verging on desperation and even ruthlessness. Anthony Wilkinson move eastwards. Stuart Shave & co’s Modern Art Inc opens in Redchurch Street (1998). 1st phase of Man (nee: Joost) Somerlink and Co’s Fordham. Sheila Lawson’s Platform, Wilkes street. Chapman Fine Arts, Fashion Street. Occasional shows of connections and artstars (David Falconer, The Chapman Brothers themselves, Thomas Grunfeld, Bank etc). Jamie Robinson’s space in Brick Lane. Harold Werner Rubin’s Rivington Gallery, at a remove from the immediate “scene”. Arrival of Prince’s Trust into Charlotte Road, 1999. White Cube move into (and becoming?! Hoxton Square after six years in Duke Street. 1996: The Commercial Gallery (Keith Ball & Co.) Spitafields. Root project with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and guest contributors David Goldenburgs Martin group shows. 1999: advent of…The Foundry! Trendy shops, like Sho! in Curtain Road, selling Cuban posters and Clockwork Orange memorabilia. Michael Landy’s At Home show in his and Gillean Wearing’s Fashion Street loft, of preparatory material and other works toward what later became Landy’s Breakdown artangel commission (cataloguing, then mechanised destruction of all Landy’s possessions). Increased tourism (as well as Jack the Ripper Walks!). Free-Range regional art and design college and department, graduation shows in Brick Lane (around Truman Brewery etc). Bodyworld, preserved human anatomy, street exhibition by Herr Doktor Gunther Von Hagens. 2000-2001-2002. Street art, Banksy and Co. Dragon Bar (1998 onwards). Banksy, Faile, Bast, Nok, Eine, Stella Vine, Santa’s Ghetto Xmas. 2002 Dragon Bar. Gary O’ Dwyer & Pierre Coinde’s Centre of Attention. 2001: Richard Priestley and Milika Miritu, ¢ell Projects. 2000: The Stuckists (Billy Childish et all) at Jo Compton’s furniture and design shop in Leonard Steet and Viner Street. Much later / more recently (with advance-footprint of the 2012 London Olympics) Hackney Wick(ed), Time Out® 1st Thursday of the Month, Shoreditch Ball, Ashwin Street Studios.

The Dragon Bar

Duncan Telford

Eliott Waters Started hanging out in Shoreditch in ‘94 and moved into Curtain Road in ‘96. Where we lived used to be an old office space, laid out all open plan over two floors. The bedrooms had veluxes and you could get out and explore, walk around all the way to The Bricklayers across the roofs. At parties people would end up wandering about up there drunk, it was dangerous but we couldn’t stop them. Once when we were up there we saw a door open, someone’s fire escape maybe, so we went into it and found a staircase, me, Paris, Martin, Kate and Wai Hung, we started walking down and it was really dark and we went down about 10 flights then it was getting lighter and lighter and opened out into an office…desks and beige computers. And the whole time we lived there we’d use it. Go down, use the milk, teabags. Use the hoover. Toaster. The door was always open. These are photos of people around at that time. Warehouse parties in Shoreditch. 333. Mother bar. Sonic Mook.

Ernesto Leal I knew it was all over when I walked into the Bricklayers and Jarvis Cocker was sitting at the bar as if he had been sitting there for twenty thousand years. And a whole load of fucking cunts hanging off his fucking feet. I just looked at him, and I thought, ‘I’m out!’

What followed was worse.

Rogan jeans Everybody seems to have left now – I’m stranded. I suppose I better turn the lights out.

Ray Okunubi I remember at the age of eleven starting secondary comprehensive, making friends with the Rosen brothers. Their father was a publcan, Their pub was called The Bull and Pump. We used to go through the ‘Posties’ known as Boundary passage (which is literally the other end of where the east end promse show is). Leaving the sea of suits through the ally into the Boudary Estate wich was covered in gabbage & moss. 10 years late I became a senior youth worker on the estate.

Falk Hirdes I remember Shoreditch as the place where - over nine months - I was offered a bed in more than 25 different households without ever having to ask for it.

Esther Planas I remember 30 Underwood Street, Five Years and Poo Poo Gallery as the best cocktail of the era I arrived in London.

Gail Burton • Shoreditch Curtains Michael and I lay in bed and stared at the curtains hanging and shifting ahead. They were floor length, mustard yellow, gold and black, in swirling over-sized paisley pattern and indistinct pink stripes between. As the breeze behind the curtains created small bulges and ripples our fragile state grew the patterns into obscene monsters and terrifying depths. We lay close, dirty and still; sweating and clawing into the night and sleep. Had we eaten beigels that night, in an attempt at restoration at four am after Mother Bar, chopped herring and salami, to pacify us into the night? Perhaps Michael arrived at my door, greasy paper bag in hand, I already back in bed after separate endings to our adventures, he calling up to my window to be let in. Or had we been thrown out of the bar? Not because I discretely sat on a nameless stranger’s cock, fucking him quietly as he grinned, on a seat at the edge of the dance floor, but because of some other misdemeanour of Michael’s. Outside, we bought hot dogs, and I overloaded mine with mustard so it squelched out explosively over my favourite denim jacket, a stain never possible to remove. Wherever, whichever night, it ended with the curtains at Tomlinson Close, again, and the sweating, and the nightmares. Over, again, again, again. Until those curtains, then sweat and sleep, and again.

Gavin Turk

Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE ANTI-FASHION 1975 “s/he is (still) her/e” new topi proverb. dedicated to thee memory of my guardian angel lady jaye breyer p-orridge 1969-2007 The photos were taken by Cosey Fanni Tutti.

Geraldine Swayne I worked in the anarchist bookshop in the 80’s. A tall. thin, creaky Victorian time capsule running between several floors on Whitechapel High Street.It had a big, chaotic archive of rare old quarterlies and pamphlets; a printing press run by Liam Gilick’s dad and a good bookshop which sold the usual do-it-yourself lifestyle manuals, plus lots of Rudolf Rocker, poetry by Passolini and Oscar Wilde’s “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” ..as well as …surprisingly “Watership Down”, apparently an anarchist classic.

It was the early days of pirate radio and I remember coming to work on the morning most of the dailies ran headlines about us selling something called “Radio Is My Bomb”; basically a manual on how to get started as an anarchist broadcaster. The whole place was deserted! All day. I minded the shop till the afternoon, then went for lunch.

Everyone was at the White Heart at the bottom of Angel Alley, hiding in case of a raid.

Some nights we would all go for a curry on Brick Lane, practically deserted as it was in those days, and talk about Utopia. Sometimes it was borscht at Blooms.They were gentle, gentlemanly types; tweedy even; artists, ex-spanish civil war soldiers, hippies, Jewish intellectuals. I first met Bill Fishman in there, the author of “The Streets of East London”.

Ten years later I made an Imax film about Whitechapel, in an attempt to record the last vestiges of an East End Russian anarchists and Communists would have seen in the late 19th century. Bill Fishman narrated it for me. I recorded him talking in a room at Toynbee Hall, (where Trotsky had spoken and where Marx’s daughter had spent the last years of her life as a social worker). When he talked about Barnardos, or the match strike girls, it was as if the Ripper Killings had just happened, nothing had changed.

People were still in need of rescuing. It felt urgent.

By the nineties I was living in an old school with a community of artists off Brick Lane. I made most of my film “EastEnd”, in our beautiful overgrown garden. I cast my friend Will as the Ripper victim Liz “long” Stride. It felt haunted getting her to re-enact some scenes so close to the real crime sites. Later it turned out her close friend Susan Stenger from Band of Susans, had written an album track about Liz Stride, on account of moving into a house on the street where she was murdered, on the same date she had died. We were all fairly creeped out by that one..!

The East End nowadays, bears hardly any resemblance to the one I knew back then..I miss it.

Giles moberly

Imogen O’Rorke My East End life revolved around Arnold Circus and the Boundary. I moved there in 1997 when I was working as a journalist. The surrounding streets were full of quaint little shops: upholsterers, schmutter and stuffing wholesalers. Redchurch St was home to artist studios. It was a bit rougher in those days and joy riding was the favourite passtime of the local kids. Almost every week there was a new car to wreck to photograph, right outside my door.

jamie Macdonald

James Johnston I spent a few years in the late 80s in East Ham, which as may as well have been Mars. There were already recording studios, like Matt Johnson’s place on Holywell Lane, and one in Hoxton I recorded in with Gallon Drunk, in 91. Even then it was still a very grimey, dilapidated and haunted feeling part of town. Some of the artists I had the privilege to meet in the early 90s, when living off Brick Lane, who’d moved into the area in the very early 70s, remain some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 34

19/10/10 06:22:52

Jamie Robinson Makes sense to me in a nonsensical way if you don’t know what I mean

James Birch sms/txt 15/10/2010 17:31 I am always amazed that when I used to visit Gilbert and George in the mid to late 1980s to discuss their show in Moscow, there were very few artists let alone people. It was easy to walk down Brick Lane, now it’s like Oxford Street and artists everywhere. Which is great.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 35

19/10/10 06:23:03

James Johnston/Factual Nonsense

Photos: Courtesy of the Estate of Joshua Compston

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 36

19/10/10 06:23:23

Kate Kotcheff Around, 1989, I remember coming down to Old Street to party in my friends photographic studio. His name was Oli Max, and he lived there as well as worked there, which for the time was quite unusual. I remember coming out onto the streets in the early morning, and looking around at the City streets. It was desolate, empty. No shops, no life at all, especially on the weekends. I remember thinking- how can anyone live here?

Keith Ball I found these plastic oranges, left behind when the fruit market at Spitelfields in east London was relocated. Fruit from plastic was always a problem for me, so I corrected the error by returning the material to a more rational use. Hello Mr. Morris where you are.

Kirsten Reynolds

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 37

OK! Will write!

19/10/10 06:23:36

Liam Duke

No Nose yoyo boyo you say potato and I say sculpture/ raum eindringling a few of nails and a floor No.26

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 38

19/10/10 06:24:36

Commercial Too & Lo Recordings Catalogue Grid for ROOT (Keith Ball) Description: L to R from top left: Front Cover, bag dust, intro, original DAT, Fax, Bruce Gilbet,Tina Keane, Karen Bleitz, Lucy Day, Add N to X, Angela Bulloch, Martin Fletcher, Warren Defever, Mark Long, Phil Holmes, Chris Gollon, Terry Miles, Rod Dickinson, 75 ???, Keith Ball, David Pope, Tom Pollock, Claire Robbins, Janine Rook, Marzbow, Red James, Stefan Beck, Savage Pencil, Cedric Christie, Joe Ewart, Gavin Turk, Jon Forss, Fergal Stapleton, David Bowie, Tim Head, Steve Wheeler, Cheap Glue, Russell Mills, Mark Webber, credits, contents / track list, Thurston. Back Cover

Lucy Day I remember maverick Russians in Shoreditch, troglodyte artists in the basement of Spitalfields Market, long days, nights, great art and enduring friendships at The Commercial Gallery and Commercial Too.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 39

19/10/10 06:24:49

Marc Hulson I remember going to London Zoo in May 1997 and staring into a chimpanzee’s eyes for 57 minutes. That was my first performance piece, and my last one too. The chimpanzee died six months later.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 40

19/10/10 06:25:03

Marco • GORGEOUS FUCKING SHITHOLE

I walked with the Colonel by Mark Chivers You can’t put your arms round a memory. Make your own fucking Shoreditch.

Your poem is beautiful. Thanks. God bless, Your

The sun come out, we had lovely weather,

And mourn his passing and tributes bring

friend Reg Kray – in letter of 11 April 1995

Just like dozens of funerals all mixed up together,

And gladden our hearts as his soul takes wing.

But then Ron was a match for a dozen men.

We’ll meet him again in a better place,

We shan’t ever look on his like again.

And all laugh together as we embrace.

Thousands and thousands turned out to see

Through the crowds I caught sight of Reg’s face

But for now he’s a king who is taking his rest,

A sight that was touching in majesty.

In the car behind on his way to the place

And in Bethnal Green he will always be blessed.

So many were crowded around the hearse

Where his brother would lie with his kith & his kin.

And the day that God calls me to be with him, then

That I had to put it all down in verse.

As the vicar said, it would be a sin

I’ll be honoured to walk with the Colonel again.

There were so many limos and so many flowers

To judge his deeds; that’s for God to do.

And so many people who’d waited for hours!

Let’s think instead of a heart that’s true,

I walked with the Colonel the other day, Down the Roman Road. What can I say?

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 41

19/10/10 06:25:09

Mark Jones I used to walk through shoreditch in the 1980’s. It was all derelict and boarded up. Fifteen years later I was painting in a studio within the Underwood St gallery building.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 42

19/10/10 06:25:36

Mel Gaffney I started to explore the areas for myself… The Shoreditch Bethnal Green area I photographed in the late 70’s early 80’s was undergoing economic decline, social upheaval, and suffering from poverty and depravation. The street markets were a source of surprising variety from old shoes, electrical equipment, fruit and veg to Church fittings and object d’art, They were surrounded by old railway yards tenement blocks, old industrial buildings - some derelict, bombsites and the down and outs who frequented them. I have tried to capture the contrast between the markets and their environs and the reality of the area when the markets are over.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 43

19/10/10 06:26:08

Michael Stubbs • Curtain Road Arts I was part of an artist group who set up a studio building at 96A Curtain Road in

1999

1992... At the time there were no other artists in the Shoreditch area as far as we

Elastic Abstract, Curtain Road Arts - London, UK; Spacex Gallery - Exeter, UK *

knew except Gary Hume who had a studio in the far North/West corner of Hoxton

Co-Curators: Alex Landrum, Michael Stubbs(Mark Cannon, Michelle Fierro, Pascal

Square. The area at the time was very bleak and full of derelict warehouse buildings,

Hervey, Phil King, Alex Landrum, DJ Simpson, Michael Stubbs)

few residential dwellings and 2 pubs (Bricklayers Arms and Barley Mow) which we frequented often. The idea for setting up the studio building called Curtain Road Arts

1996

was so that as a group we could afford individual studio spaces that weren’t at a

Art 96, Curtain Road Arts at the Design Centre, London, UK. *

commercial rent... Our building was in a bad state of repair and leaked and we had to

(Artists/Curators: Dermot O’Brien, Glenn Brown, Angela Bulloch, Andrea Fisher,

repair the roof, toilets, build plasterboard walls etc to begin with... We stayed there

Anya Gallaccio, Dan Hays, Stephen Hughes, Alex Landrum, Marielle Neudecker,

until 1999 when the area began to become more ‘commercial’ and the rents were set

Cornelia Parker, Emma Smith, Michael Stubbs)

to rise astronomically.

1993 Originally 10 artists were involved: Dermot O’Brien, Glenn Brown, Andrea Fisher,

Mandy Loves Declan 100%, Mark Boote Gallery - New York, USA *

Nick Fudge, Anya Gallaccio, Stephen Hughes, Alex Landrum, Marielle Neudecker,

Co-Curators: Glenn Brown, Stephen Hughes, Alex Landrum, Michael Stubbs

Emma Smith, Michael Stubbs. Nick Fudge left the group very early on and about 1994

(Glenn Brown, Adam Chodzko, Keith Coventry, Anya Gallaccio, Stephen Glynn,

we re-arranged a couple of the spaces to include more artists after the unfortunate

Siobhan Hapaska, Stephen Hughes, Alex Landrum, Michael Stubbs, Mark Wallinger,

passing away of Andrea Fisher... Angela Bulloch, Dan Hays, Cornelia Parker.

Gillian Wearing) * A collaborative video between each of the artists and producer Angela Daniell accompanied the exhibition... It was also included in

Alongside individual studio practices we put on occassional exhibitions mostly

the ‘Launch’ Exhibition.

in Alex Landrum’s ground floor space and sometimes Dermott O’Brien’s (in leiu of

Launch, Curtain Road Arts - London, UK

rent)... Solo and double shows included artists from within the studios and from

(Artists/Curators: Dermot O’Brien, Glenn Brown, Andrea Fisher, Anya Gallaccio,

without: David Batchelor, Dan Hays and Phil King, Alex Landrum and Michael

Dan Hays, Stephen Hughes, Alex Landrum, Marielle Neudecker, Emma Smith,

Stubbs.. We also put on group shows (one of which travelled to NYC and another to

Michael Stubbs)

Spacex in Exeter)). They included (amongst others):

* Denotes Catalogue

Ode to a Cliché (Shoreditch revisited 2010) – by M. Olé You’re only young Once in a blue moon.

But the good old Days are numbered and

You’re only young Once bitten twice shy.

Age before Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You’re only young Once and for All in a day’s work.

So powder your Nose (!) spring chicken:

“When I grow rich” say the bells of Shoreditch.

No sleep Over sleep for the wicked.

Mark my Words don’t come Easy come easy Go against the grain.

Forty winks. Nudge nudge wink wink.

Go in one ear and out the other.

Let sleeping dogs Lie back and think of England.

Go from strength to Strength in numbers.

Remember, variety is the spice of Life and soul of the party

Go the extra mile and (goes without saying) go to the dogs.

And the bigger they are the harder they Fall on their feet.

So near and yet So Far so Good clean fun.

You’re conspicuous by your Absence makes the heart grow fonder,

I love you, warts and All part of the Service with a Smile and the whole world smiles

And actions speak louder than Words fail me.

with you.

But when all is said and done … there’s a lot more said than done

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 44

19/10/10 06:26:09

Nick Waplington

Michael ye chong

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 45

19/10/10 06:26:11

Normski

Oliver Bennett• Shox of the New The Shoreditch/Hoxton zone is the living embodiment of the great development narrative of the last 30 years: that artists revive desecrated urban neighbourhoods and revive them as places of ‘creative’ industry. From fashion to design, art galleries and architectural firms, all watered by a hefty injection of the ‘nightlife economy‘ - this has been the biggest local story, the narrative arc, the Ditch’s manifest destiny. According to this folklore, it spread from the Bricklayer‘s Arms‘ in the 1980s: a destination for a large handful of artists and scene of an auspicious crossroads site that was to become the crucible of the Shoreditch phenomenon, later to become the centre of a maelstrom of neo-tattoos, vintage jeans and - always - coffee. (I recall sitting in the Bean, drinking coffee, and a passing lorry blocked out the undressed steel-framed window - an impromptu industrial curtain on the urban sublime.)

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 46

Paul Barkshire

Still, there was something seductive about the

middle-class movement into Islington, identified by

Shoreditch renewal myth, supported by the notion,

geographer Ruth Glass in 1961 as ‘gentrification’,

prevalent since the early 1980s, that near-east London

gave rise to the ‘stripped pioneers’: those that

had the ’highest concentration of artists in Europe’.

exposed floor-boards in Victorian houses. In

One of the great uncontested statistics it was by

Shoreditch it was the turn of the Bare Bricklayers:

several accounts put out by a past functionary at

the de-plasterers and removers of false ceilings,

the Whitechapel Gallery in a moment of marketing

once designed to alleviate the echoing emptiness

genius. It meant that artists could be given back their

and demounted so as to achieve the requisite

grand avant garde role: as harbingers of the herd.

urban ganzfeld. An increase in media chatter about

These early adopters would move on, we all thought,

Shoreditch and Hoxton became supported by

but still today in Shoreditch you can still find the

geographic theory. Richard Florida’s Bohemia and

old-timers, the ‘we were here firsters‘, the ones

Economic Geography came out in 2001, proposing

who claim to have preferred it when the Ditch was

that the more artists, gays and tolerant inclusive

a dustbowl, prior to its transition from the gritty

bohemians populated an area, the more investment it

light industrial zone populated with the industries of

attracted. It was the high-water mark of the ’creative

earlier technology - the die cutters, gluers and litho

economy’, and indeed, such studies exposed tens and

printers - into the new world of the web designers,

even hundreds of Shoreditches in cities around the

urban branders and self-facilitating media noders, as

world, all with the same kinds of people in them.

Nathan Barley described himself. These old-timers

Florida even created a Bohemia Index and the

fought the gentrification war for these ingrates

retrograde, 19th century idea of the Bohemian was

and in the tradition, despised this new generation

redefined into the consumer age. The multitudes

as inauthentic. Still, there was something exciting

running around in Carhaart jackets and combat

and vertiginous about the pace of change. The bars

trousers became a leisure army who turned

started to be innumerable, then almost uncountable,

Shoreditch into a millennial Haight Ashbury, with only

largely defined by a degraded skip-aesthetic:

the problem that their breathless story leaves a

reclaimed Chesterfields with bits of stuffing poking

huge historical lacunae - the Shoxton of the past.

through gaps in the torn leather, rivets as visible on steel pillars as they were on £200 jeans. The

Ends

19/10/10 06:26:22

ourhistory ...growingculture ourhistory

is the creation of Ernesto Leal and its aim is to both record and archive the collective

memories of the individuals who inhabit the moving places and changing spaces of the city. Through the medium of the visual arts,

ourhistory places maximum emphasis on the experiences of those who are directly

affected by the continuously changing nature of the city. It sets out to celebrate, recognise and to tell the stories of ‘those who were there’.

ourhistoryis a collaborative project that brings together creative practitioners from all walks of life who are then invited to take part in creating ‘Our History’. East End Promise is a continuation of the highly acclaimed and successful ‘Our History” Celebrating 20 Years of Acid House Graphic Design Exhibition. This was an exhibition which brought together some of the most iconic graphic design, taken from the original flyers used to publicised Raves and Acid House parties over the last 20years. Officially launched in November 2008 at the Huntingdon Project Gallery on Redchurch Street, East London. The exhibition ran over three days, received maximum press coverage and was visited by over 3000 people. In February2009 the exhibition moved to Selfridges Ultra Lounge Gallery Space as part of the ARTCORE show. Since then,

ourhistory has travelled to the Time Out Cafe-

Tokyo and the U-Dance Studios-Shanghai. ‘Our History’ 20 Years of Acid House Graphic Design Exhibition has to date been visited by over 10 000 people worldwide.

Paul Sakoilsky I remember telling my poor ex-partner, the mother of my children, repeatedly, I promise, no, honest, I promise, tonight I’ll come home after the pub closes. Well, yet again, I forgot to mention I was in The Conqueror or yet another dodgy lock-in.

The opening of Hermann Nitsch’s first U.K. exhibition at 30 Underwood St Gallery in ’97. Suddenly there were literally thousands of people turning up, and Simon amazed at it all… taking Nitsch to Charlie Wrights International bar for Thai food and the after party – dancing, laughing… The animal liberationists demonstrating, with the prior warning call from Inspector Bullock of Scotland Yard (no kidding!). A life changing event, opening a door to Austria and Italy, yet more great artists/people/friends & times…

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 47

19/10/10 06:26:31

Straight No Chaser: Interplanetary Sounds: Ancient to Future in Hoxton!

light on a new generation of jazz, rare groove and

Over four action packed years it emerged as one of

globally influenced artists from the Jazz Warriors to

the most important venues in the history of clubland.

Galliano to Jamiroquai to Tribe Called Quest…. and to

Stumbling into a queue around the block for a mid

do that we built a wicked collective of young writers,

week session of Coldcut’s Stealth was a shock!

photographers and illustrators. It made sense to

The “Asian Underground” with Talvin Singh at the

invite others to join us in Coronet Street. Jez Nelson,

helm went ballistic at Anokha. The junglist massive

Chris Phillips and Sonita Alleyne moved from a dismal

– Metalheadz- took over Sunday night and Gilles

squat-like office in Camden and set about building

Peterson ran Far East on Saturday’s (with myself and

the radio production company Somethin’ Else. Today,

Demus in that deep upstairs room). The Blue Note was

Back in 1988 – during the ‘E’ fuelled “summer of

they are a ranking, multi media, production company

eclectic and radical. Believe. By our 10th anniversary

love” we launched the “designer fanzine” Straight

occupying a serious building in Brunswick Place.

(see the ‘Great Day In Hoxton’ pic) Chaser had been

No Chaser. Born of the underground jazz-dance

We were also home to Colm Carty and Mike Connolly

tempted by that dubious due from Glasshouse to move

club scene the mag was dedicated to The Freedom

(today an award winning documentary film maker)

offices into Hoxton Square. In our building alone, along

Principle. We sold it record shops, in selected clubs

who managed Marxist Irish rap crew Marxman.

with posse of girls that sold cut flowers, there was

and fashion emporiums. While hustling away on

Around that time a 17 years old music fanatic, who

Doton Adebayo & Steve Pope’s black publishing set

Chaser No.4 former NME editor and Chaser co-

was working part time at Honest Jons, came to check

up X.Press, an excellent Scandanavian photographer

founder, Neil Spencer, introduced Kathryn Willgress

us out. This kid from Oxford told us: ‘You need me!”.

called Henrik and, in the “penthouse”, a musician/

and myself to a young MA1 clad designer – Swifty.

His name was James Lavelle aka “the Holygoof”. We

composer Rob ‘Clubbed to Death’ Dougan. In reality,

He was the right hand man of Neville Brody - the

gave him his own column. It was in Coronet Street

by the mid 90s Hoxton and Shoreditch was teeming

design don of the day - and though he was working

during a bunch of late night herbally fuelled sessions

with a whole bunch of outsiders and creatives, other

at The Face he was keen to embark on a venture of

that James and Swift concocted the look of Mo’

than the Brit Art crew who drank in the Barley Mow.

his own. Neville was based in East Road in Old Street

Wax records. Japanese graffix, Man From UNKLE,

Inevitably, the money began to creep in. Hackney

and it was Swift, on his way to work, who spotted a

Star Wars toys, Kung Fu, NYC graf-art and hip hop

Council began talking about the regeneration of

freshly converted studio for rent in a run down, narrow

combined to give the label it’s unique look. As James

Shoreditch. Adjacent to the Chaser office was the

cobbled street at the back of Hoxton Square.

got more and more into production he also built links

freshly opened Lux (cinema/art spaces). It should have

with Howie B’s Milo studio, which was round the

been a good thing but it turned out to be public money,

Chaser moved into Coronet St in 1989. It was opposite

corner in Hoxton Sq, and with musicans like Simon

scandalously squandered on a massive scale. There

the studio of Japanese jazz-funk bass man, Kumar, and

‘Palm Skin’ Richmond, currently of the Bays. The

square itself was cleaned up. The capoeira angola

spitting distance from jazz bassist, Peter Ind’s Bass

sound of trip hop was in the making. Hoxton was

players took over in the lunchtimes and evenings and

Clef club. Initially we took the basement and ground

historically poor and deprived. It was rough, working

rivaling the sound of the berimbau was the clicking

floor. Swift set up his Mac SEs in the basement and set

class and in the Seventies it was a stronghold of

of the bamboo arnis sticks at Bob Breen’s Academy.

about crafting Straight No Chaser – it won us an Apple

the racist National Front. Many people who worked

Silvios, Lennies and Wrong Wrong were no longer

Award design award and if I remember right, that

there didn’t live there. Pubs like the Bricklayers

the only culinary options available. A rash of bars and

night, we shared a table with Graham Wood of Tomato

didn’t open at the weekend. That was to change. A

restaurants spread hoping to replicate the success of

and Massive Attack’s 3D/Robert Del Naja - who was

Ghanaian, John (never known his surname) took over

Canteloupe in Charlotte Rd. The most significant event

designing the fanzine for Bristol City football club.

Charlie Wright’s – the pub was named after an old

was the arrival of the White Cube which signaled

East End boxer – in Pitfield St. Initially, it populated

significant rent rises and the end of an era. So, before

Back then it was Monday nights at The Wag, Talking

by geezers with whippets and off duty CID who

the arrival of coach loads of punters from Essex

Loud at Dingwalls, Soul II Soul at The Africa Centre…

resembled a bunch of villains. John’s mission was to

to savour the Saturday night Shoreditch clubbing

we were rooted in the club and warehouse party

turn it around. Chaser organised the first ever party

experience, before the Hoxton Fin and a satirical

scene. The Chaser office was a hive of activity as

there and we were all regulars in his late night lock

magazine aimed at “Shoreditch Twats” , Straight No

it connected different aspects of the scene. We

in. Despite the odd fracas it was the only genuine

Chaser followed the traditional route of creatives and

did pirate radio and promoted our own DJ and live

interface between us and the locals. There was a

economic migrants and moved further East. Next stop:

happenings. Swift revolutionized the art of the club

long history of warehouse parties in that area and

London Fields. But that’s another story.

flyer and Janine Neye in her 2CV made sure they

I have vague memories of parties run out of Flip in

were distributed around the capital. He took on the

Curtain Road and others by Demob who were based

art work for Gilles Peterson’s Talking Loud records

in Soho. However, nobody could have predicted the

Paul Bradshaw – Publisher/Editor – STRAIGHT NO

and the office gradually emerged as a focus for a new

impact, in 1992, of Nuphonic’s Sav Remzi taking over

CHASER: Interplanetary Sounds: Ancient to Future

generation of musicians. It was Chaser’s job to shed

the Bass Clef and relaunching it as the Blue Note.

(1988 – 2007)

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 48

19/10/10 06:26:32

PAV

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 49

19/10/10 06:26:44

Pav Mxski

Peter Lewis•London Calling

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

It was 1985, early in January. I’d come back from Holland having completed a residency in Rotterdam, at the Kunstakademie. My father had died in October the year before and I was trying to get back on my feet, and move back to London, to open a space. I thought that opening a space could get me out of the solipsistic morbidity of the studio, and into a more social network, something I wanted. People, excitement, art, parties...health regained through hedonism. I went to New York to see what was happening in the East Village. Small galleries housed in dirty spaces, David Robbins was there, Peter Nagy, a lot of intelligent work was being made, and artists were determining a scene that produced so much press - this was remarkable as an independent production, the scene suggested that another economic system could be engaged and reworked out of the oppositions in capital , to condition the way art could be perceived, and how the art/ life dichotomy was being redefined by its triad relation with entertainment (David Robbins, The Velvet Grind, Selected Essays, Interviews, Satires (1983–2005), JRP-Ringier). I saw Jeff Koons’ basket ball floating in a vitrine, at a small space in the Lower East side. Who would have thought how the market would be moved by such discrete gestures... the New York scene was highly organised around the idea of dealing, gaining media presence, so something small could be quickly elevated by an urbane knowledge and manipulation of art’s economic power through the museum, the critic, the collector, and celebrity.

Galleries included Gallery 51X on St. Mark’s Place, East 10th Street’s Nature Morte, Civilian Warfare on East 11th Street, New Math on East 12th Street and Gracie Mansion’s gallery on East 10th Street and Avenue B. Along with the galleries appeared new art bars (most notably the Red Bar and the Pyramid) that conspicuously promoted the mix of fashion, music, performance, video and painting...all very social. Some time later I met Andy Warhol in London, introduced to him by ex Factory girl, Mandy Miami, and we worked with Mandy on some stuff in London on his / her visit upstairs at the nightclub Heaven. I think ‘Andy’ was showing at Anthony D’Offay. I remember someone smashing the glass table he sat at given out autographs just to get a freak shot of him. I felt very much a resurgence of the excitement I had felt in 60s and 70s London when something happens, also in Paris with my friends there who were studying under Marcuse from 68 through early 70s. The talk was always of doing something else, something not parochial, (Paris was dying well before Beaubourg was built, thats why 68 happened I guess, it was sealed tight with the Pompidou, clearing the streets for the big funeral, recruiting the will of the people ). I was thinking out the historical conditions that created or killed off situations, felt as the experience of living, as both a resurgence and capitulation of spirit, through punk, of the city. I showed with Paul Neagu and Joseph Beuys at Neagu’s Shaftesbury Avenue Gallery, the Generative Art Group, and met David Medalla there in 1976. Later, I lived with some of Stiff Records crew in 1977. The Damned often crashed on the floor in my room - Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible...” wake up cunt” was the typical early morning call with Dave already fully dressed polishing a shiny black shoe. My friends then were music critics like Mick Wall and Pete Makowski, enjoying punk at its most pristinely

you wouldn’t want to see it in the daylight getting hammered on rotation the cracks in the leather look great at night and then the knock on the door when the fuck are you coming home oh never

Peter Locker

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 50

putrid. I worked freelance for Sounds, with Mick and Pete, as a photographer, in those putrid amphetamine fuelled days. I still carried some aspiration to do something called art something ‘insincere’ and succeed in life, too, as Marcel Broodthears had written, accompanying his first exhibition. In 1985 I met The Grey Organisation in London at an art opening off Bond Street (the now defunct Fabian Caarslon) and had a space offered in Kings Cross by a fashion store opposite the Scala cinema, a basement with a low ceiling. This was the Submarine Gallery and the Grey’s opening was swamped by members of the press .

The Greys were really adept at self-publicity after they ‘bombed ‘ Cork Street’s straight galleries with grey paint and got banned from the city centre for acts of vandalism, leaving London for New York and later to L.A. It was arguably something inherited from the strategies of disobedience of Paris 68, culled from the heroism of Guy Debord, psycho-geography- suicide - alcohol, a better way out than drowning with the Situationist International, but there was a very aggressive rejection in the British art world to what we were doing- and I got the hell beaten out of me too, critically, for supporting their activities. I moved into the Grey’s house in Bow with my girlfriend and we stayed there with Toby and Daniel and Paul for a while.

Maureen Paley was also just at Beck Road and I remember Helen Chadwick being thrown on the street with her possessions.. Was that in a dream, part of an art work or real life? Who knows? Who cares? It happened one way or another. I recall a day when a black guy with a petrol can torched the dole office in Tooting where I signed on in 1982.

We just got up and walked out. It was unexceptional. After all, I lived in Railton Road just after the riots. Blood-soaked imagery depicted in colourful anti-American propaganda were fly-posted everywhere - pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran and the revolution, with lots of cheap Iranian brown heroin arriving on the streets in 79. The denunciation of American influence led to militant Islamic students storming the US Embassy in Teheran in November 1979. Some of the American hostages were held captive for more than a year. Still we got the shah and his heroin.

Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction were still in full swing. The world was messed up with victory and defeat, and London was on the edge of the Thatcher ‘money never sleeps’ generation playing itself out to the lyrics of Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ , romantic/fascist, flag waving, solvent, still fresh from the Falklands. The Brixton riot had taken place in Lambeth, in 1981. The riot resulted in almost 279 injuries to police and 45 injuries to members of the public; over a hundred vehicles were burned, including 56 police vehicles; and almost 150 buildings were damaged, with thirty burned. There were 82 arrests. Reports suggested that up to 5,000 people were involved in the riot. . pretty tame but still London was defined at the time by a sense of futile resistance. There were concurrently, free art events at B2 Gallery run by Dave Dawson in 1982, and I showed there, in Art and Artifice, in 1981, with Vivienne Westwood, John Maybury and Andrew Logan and many others. Met Derek Jarman on the stairwell, in the crowd.

After Jubilee, he was working on Caraveggio, and most critically, and poetically, in 1988, The Last of England. Even Bryon Gysin had stayed over. ‘ B2 was not some isolated art space but part of a community of artists, publishers (the

19/10/10 06:26:57

Anarchist Press) and other galleries living and working in Wapping... The area was a popular film location for Victorian period films but also a boarded up tenement environment Wapping High Street was like a ghost town and the whole area had little or no direct transport. The old tube station shut early and you had to walk a fair distance to reach the Docklands Railway or a bus. Consequently many an audience slept at B2, once over hundred. We also partied and entertained artists and public alike, it seemed natural for people to drop in from all over the globe.’ Roger Ely ( from B2, at The Centre of Attention, 2006). It all changed with the gentrification of Wapping and the birth of Canary Wharf in the early 90s. In 1991, 92, I met Leigh Bowery through Lovely Jobly, an underground newspaper I wrote for among others, run chaotically by Hercules Fisherman. This was around the same time that Doris Saatchi split from Charles and British Art started to be promoted at home and abroad. I curated shows, made many works in collaboration with curators and artists under the name FLAG, directed from my home, where I lived with my partner at the time, the artist Runa Islam.

With Derek Jarman’s death things in 1994 got a little duller and changed, I feel for the worse. Art was replaced by something called the Curator. Hans Ulrich Obrist and Laurence Bossé curated Life/Live at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1996, as an overview of the energetic 90s British art scene at a point when things generally were becoming totalised, reduced to a few names as ‘yBa’; also in the apologist kind of eulogising in Frieze, which side-stepped or ignored invisible, unvetted alternatives to the mainstream.

That attitude has prevailed - but there is no alternative, to the multitude of artists writhing in the Baudelairian anonymity of the crowd. Obrist’s canny exposure of the many independent activities in dirty spaces might be suspect, in term of the bureaucratic or managerial power that could be attributed to the insight of the uber- curator and his marathon efforts to control and archive, to lift life into an aesthetic, hygenic state of exception. As Andrea Fraser acknowledges as the built-in failure of institutional critique, such curatorial exploitation by Obrist at the very least reveals some truths about art’s ego particularist or narcissist agenda, by his own example. These days, in the 2000s, someone like Merlin Carpenter has tapped into and understood the common need for the reciprocal kind of contempt that curating encourages. I recently opened Redux as a curatorial project returning to ten years of unacknowledged works, on my return from the Middle East with Makiko Nagaya (returning to the same space where I had, in 1992, shown together with Keith Arnatt, Matthew Arnatt, Runa Islam, Piers Wardle and David Mollin in ‘Lemon’). The gallery in Commercial Street was now ‘registered’ with the semiotic brand with a capital R ringed with an understanding of the market circulation of value. It figured simultaneously as signifying a free art school and host to other’s projects. ‘Registered’ literally, registered a new meaning through a disappearance. This double-take presented a radical change from the 90s embattled oppositions. We had no interest to continue since the war had been won in our collective unconscious.

All that moved London, had moved in the 90s through Saatchi, as a collector [great openings unlimited access to alcohol] but which always left a bad taste, something

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 51

unpalatable, in all his adman sophistry], events designed to embody the spectator in the bad faith of commercial ‘success’, without any need of puritanical, intellectual rigour.

By a more reflexive attitude to the market we had extracted a certain moment, that tested the impossibility and limit of critique outside of ‘saatchification’ i.e. the forced symbolic value of art through the prestige of the artist-as-geniusentrepreneur-celebrity-asshole. That moment could re-align value through an equally powerful symbolic violence. Like extracting a rotten tooth. Malignant to the core, the auction houses accelerated kill or be killed speculative dealing, placing artists at the mercy of the prestige collection provided they were ready to be sold down the river. Charles Saatchi had visited east end small spaces after his divorce in 1990 where he cultivated a renewed interest less in the kind of ‘difficult’ work of artists that we had shown at the level of a certain intentional anonymity and criticality than in particular work that represented a sign for another British movement - but things cross over - there were a lot of paradoxical happenings in the period 92 to 96. City Racing might be perceived from here as a research and development cell for the rather quaint prevailing system at that time, of dealers and insiders, the auction houses, the academies, et al, whilst I was, wishfully thinkng, working ostensibly in a more critical way, ‘failing’ better, returning like Don Quixote, to assault the windmills, to the site where the yBa myth was constructed; with Matthew Arnatt, and Julian Stallabrass we ‘conspired’ to advertise Candyman II in art magazines, following conceptual art practice, and in 1993- 94 held an exhibition at the same site that Hirst had occupied at Building 1, in E15. Matt Collings was also involved but as an artist, representing another way of breaking down preconceptions of what critics do and don’t do, and how media manipulation and parasitical tactics could equally open up a can of worms as to how things ‘succeed’ or ‘fail’. Collings found a way of detaching criticism from a fake or redundant objectivity and aligned himself closer to artists as one himself. I felt at the time that the transdisciplinary way of working both inside and outside a system might yield unexpected results, good or bad. The ads presented a rather bleak, but not a defeatist, view, as firstly not interested to help the work exhibited but rather to argue what an exhibition is, through disengaging seeing or looking, from visual display and theatrical, minimalist, space, as to how value and property markets might be assuaged by theatrical, occult or crypto-hybrid means, to mystify and gain media, disguise from audience attention. Tate Gallery, and property tycoons, et cetera. Hans Haacke comes to mind. The choice was there, briefly. However shows in empty warehouses were to become almost anathema in the following years, by 1998, a lot of stuff going on solidly up to then also with the very open system of collaborations and sharing - I can’t count the number of projects - with like-minded artists such as BANK contesting and parodying the motives of independent curating, at Underwood Street, where other artist- groups staged exhibitions, including Simon Hedges at no 30, Mark Hulson and Elizabeth Price at 5 Years, and Paul Sakoilsky himself, whilst organising the Hermann Nitsch show, traveling between Vienna and London, and Naples. Vyner Street is a pale imitation of these early contested organisations success vis-a-vis the way the market has been expanded to be globally inclusive

of subversion, glamour and credibility, as project spaces again turn back to the New York model, in the kind of lower east side dealing from the 80s, with perhaps the ‘young Dealer’ rising like Scorpio, and feeding the market with new, ready made artists tailored for the inclusivity of the system. Nothing new in this or recriminating- Dan Graham had presented an interesting argument for the impossibility of being outside of anything, other than ‘bo-ho’ as an unattractive option, so if capital is without alternative, it has to reinvent itself again; in his critical essays going back some 20 years earlier, he foresees these developments published in ‘Two Way Mirror Power’, (Selected Writings

by Dan Graham on His Art, MIT Press, 1998.) During that period FLAG worked with artists such as Giorgio Sadotti, and his space, Modern Art, in Whitechapel, and Patrick Brill, in Something’s Wrong at Tower Bridge, and with also parallel events in group shows and collaborations at Catalyst in Belfast, Tramway in Glasgow, W139 in Amsterdam. By placing projects closely together, or bringing cities closely together a sense of energy precipitated change, as if there was really an ‘event’ occuring culturally beyond the usual self-enclosing boundaries of individual expressions. These simulations of change were partially effective in acceptance of the work, although not ideal. By the time I was at Goldsmiths, lecturing in ‘curating’ and invited as a curator of various biennials and Kunstvereins, the debates appeared academic and redundant. Research culture had won out, with Frieze talking of ‘super-hybridity’ and free art schools.

The trickery of appearances, of a fiction about London, after all had been easily proven, early on by for example Patricia Bickers in ‘ The Brit Pack: Contemporary British Art, the View from Abroad, (Cornerhouse Publications, 1995), as constituting the marketing and export of a British art ‘scene’.

If colluding with the endless fakery of an ‘optimism’ to be reread as indicative symptom of triumphalism, in happy announcements in the Evening Standard such as ‘House Prices Rise Again!’, Bank Tabloid’s headlines ‘ London Over!’ uncannily anticipated the end of the 90s, and of the Brit’s self-congratulatory national identity, not only by their own break up, but as witness to the inevitable rise of the globalised power of the city, as the City of a World Power, of Bankside’s conversion from power station to the megamuseum, in the ascendancy of Frieze Art Fair, sovereign over London in the 2000s, and in the defeat of a particular period of micro-poltical artistic excess and exception to evident inequalities. All this reverie that attested to the myth of sovereignty of the artist feeding on the surface of the social body, is made an imposing ‘rule of exception’ that now, in retrospect, overreaches the horizons of the City.

I personally look back to those struggles without a slur of nostalgia, of what could have been, as there are always new arguments and disagreements to the judiciary, of agonistic pluralism, unacceptable activity and thinking, arguably done better through the global interconnections of the internet, to paraphrase Christopher Williams, that might create the conditions for a certain kind of seeing, when in the dark.

Peter Lewis is an artist and curator. He currently publishes the online journal of contemporary art, at www. slashseconds.com

19/10/10 06:26:58

Phill Maxwell & Hazuan Hashim

Richard Hübner (The Indo)

Steve Micalef Outside

Co-founder of THE INDO bar, Whitechapel, an (in)

I never went to Joshua’s funeral - I didn’t think ‘e

famous boozer and arts space, which ran a huge

liked me, not after I walked from Brixton to one of

amount of events, giving many artists, musicians,

‘ez poncy shows with Jake the Snake the Brixton

poets and photographers their first platform. Also

criminal ‘n’ we wouldn’t leave at 8 o’clock ‘n’ stayed

founder of the Jago Gallery, Redchurch Street, which

all night drinking wiv ‘ez coke dealer. Jake ‘ad a fight

succumbed to the rapid economic changes sweeping

with Joshua - Joshua loved fightin’ usually comin off

the area.

worse ‘n’ Jake walked back to Brixon lobbing the last bottle of Frascati over the railway line at Farringdon ‘n’ when ‘e next woke up with blood on ez ‘and, ‘e thought

Roslyn Gaunt

Sean Dawson

‘e’d murdered me. ‘Fete Worse than Death’? Wot a

I remember going to The Fate Worse Than Death in

I’m not doing’ any poems if the artists ain’t doing’ no

Hoxton 1994, seeing Leigh Bowery performing his own

art- I was an inverted gargoyle as Gavin Turk swung a

birth and loving the gloriously diabolical nature of it all.

string of sausages around me mouth open at a ground

load of stalls? Can’t be bothered – Farmers market or wotever in Hoxton Sq. You’e in it said Piers - we’ll

floor window as Piers’ Farmer Geddon ciders poured in me gob from the roof splashing everywhere- outside says Joshua cos I said the gloves tacky envelop with Gilbert ‘n’ Georges address on, blu-tacked to the wall is shit ‘n’ the french fire brigade band- I saw ‘em last week at Novepaint- outside! Says Joshua the scorpions on toast dats real art I say- Joshua brought ‘em back with huge chillie-size coloured bugs from the Gilbert ‘n’ George show in china- I remember- Joshua, stayin’ at ma ‘ouse passin’ out after being naked ‘n’ losin’ all ez clothes at a resturant hugging ‘ez briefcase at Brixton Poets’ house- arching ‘ez ole body over ‘ez precious papers which became ‘ez pillow cos ‘e was afraid we’d pinch ‘em ‘n’ up - the view top Balfron Tower at a show of tat about to go off crossbow ‘n’ ows- stung ‘n’ pointing at the private viewers ‘n’ all Joshua could say to me was shall I chuck ya over the side here or over here Micalef? Spoilt for choice.

Outside! orders Joshua I thought ‘e wanted to talk to me- before I could say lovely show ‘e’d got me in the middle of the road pullin’ me finger back – Piers jumps in to save me ‘n’ they both fight Piers’ expensive

Stewart Home Richard Niman

I can probably swing by tomorrow.... but probably

I remember broadcasting from the Foundry.

I have your number on my phone.... Ciao, Stewart.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 52

suspectacles go flyin’ as in slow-mo a taxi inches forward crushin’ ‘em.

October 2010

not until early evening.... what’s your address in Redchurch Street as that might be easier.... Don’t think

19/10/10 06:27:29

FUTURE BELONGS TO US 1989

Stimulus Ltd meets Gilbert & George at Fournier Street, London-England

STD : And so life and art?

GEORGE : I can think of many aspects of life which I find very offensive. Art is not there to be inoffensive.

That is not the purpose of art! You don’t want to please people.

GILBERT: We want to be subversive, to stimulate thought.

GEORGE : And not to make photographs but pictures.

We make pictures.

STD: Why do that ?

GILBERT: We make art for people to see it. We are speaking up. Artists is a speaking person.

GEORGE: To advance western civilization, push it forward.

GEORGE : In a way it is what we are concerned about.

Before you die you will have various problems, various fears, various pleasures and we are dealing with these common areas.

STIMULUS LTD : How is the District of East End ? You abode in Fournier Street....

GILBERT: To re examine life every day...

STD: And words, titles?

STD: Sculpture or performance?

GEORGE : To walk around here on sunday is very exciting, its enormous. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people come to see the markets...

GEORGE : Thats figurative...

GEORGE : It is normal. Its is not artistic and it is not weird. Did you ever see a book without a title? Did you ever find a cigarette without a name? Words are there to make work stronger and identify with peoples lives.

Photography & Audio : St Van Bray Assisted by : Sue Hester Special Thanks : Mike Harding & Jon Wozencroft

GILBERT : Sunday morning is fantastic.

STD: Would you say that all this painterly decorative art mush going around the galleries shows totally pointless activity?

GILBERT : The search for life, that is our search. And we use forms to express that. It is speaking it, like a ceremony. Performance is limited in what you can do with it. What is next to that? Photography, the most powerful thing today.

GILBERT: It is good for the viewer to remember. It is all about speaking loud and clear to the viewer.

TO BE CONTINUED.......

GEORGE : For what we are aiming for and for what we want to achieve, and for what we believe is the real and proper function of art, YES!!

STD : You make art for ordinary folk?

GILBERT : Not only ordinary. It is wider, bigger...our art is not elitist, it is not based on art for arts sake. You know what I mean? A lot of art is done for arts sake. A lot of it is done for decoration, for decorating rooms.

Especially now...It is about having a profession, having a product. We don’t believe that art should do that.

GEORGE : Art today is made for middle aged, middle class cultural elite. Some of the artists who make this work will tell you that. What happens, they do a painting and put it in a foyer of corporate office, for example. 3000 people will come through the door and not one will stop for a second. Some squares, some shapes, some colors, it does not disturb them.

Whereas if you put one of our pieces up they will be disturbed in some way, yes? You have to have an attitude in this.

Suzanne Treister I remember the day after I gave up my studio in 1993 someone got killed in the street just outside he building.

STD : Controversy then?

GILBERT: It does not matter if you like it or hate it!

GEORGE: Some people like it, some people hate it, some people love it! HAHA! We have very passionate support and very violent opposition. But that is same as life, no?

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 53

19/10/10 06:27:55

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 54

19/10/10 06:28:18

SWIFTY

pretty much it . Although around the corner was the bagel bake but that was reserved for the early hours, usually on a Sunday morning before hitting the market at 6am.

Fast forward to 1988 By this time I’d finished my degree and had moved to London squatting in Lambeth and working at the Face magazine, and later Arena Magazine and ended up at Neville Brody’s new studio in East Rd just off Old st roundabout. This was well before the area was regenerated and was quite literally a dump. After a days work everyone headed for the West End to party and club. We would eat on City Road at a cafe there and sometimes in the Bier keller underneath the eye hospital but a few little cafes were opening up and there was signs of improvement.

1985 whilst at Manchester polytechnic studying graphic design I secured a work placement at Assorted Images ran by ex manchester student Malcom Garrett.

I arrived in London and headed for Curtain Rd. I didn’t know London at all let alone the East end . I was a Lancashire kid in a strange town. It was mind blowing to me to work at what I considered one of the most influential design agencies ever . But it was more than a graphic design firm it was a publishing house and ideas centre and hub for all kinds of creatives and forward thinkers.

Below Assorted Images was the Strongroom recording studios complete with Jamie Reid paintings and across the alleyway resided Ian Wright illustrator extraordinaire who was also a massive influence on me and Steven Appleby . Lunches were spent at the Terminus cafe (opp shoreditch church), It was run by an Italian couple and served up a heady concoction of pasta and cabbie fry ups. It was incredible to share a table with the likes of Howard DeVoto and Malcom Garret, Kasper DeGraff and Steven Appleby. I’ll never forget being asked If I wanted “husband Juice’ on my liver and bacon which referred to the special gravy which only her husband could make ! Other eateries included the Rivington Grill which was the greasiest of spoons - Ian wright once said to me don’t eat there cos your fried egg sandwich will taste of lamb chops (!) because they never cleaned the grill. After hours you had the Bricklayers and Barley Mow and that was

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 55

By may 1990 I’d taken on Straight No Chaser magazine which i was designing four times a year and through that connection teamed up with Gilles Peterson designing all the sleeves for Talkin Loud records.

By May of that year I was ready to stretch my wings and leave the comfortable nest of Brody’s studio and embark upon my own graphical adventures. Paul Bradshaw had expressed interest in sharing a studio as they were outgrowing their office in Stokey so we agreed to look for a cheap space. I lived in Hackney at the time and would get off the number 73 outside Shoreditch town hall walk through Hoxton Sq thru the alleyway to Pitfield Street and on to East rd. One day I took a slight diversion along Old street and up the cobbled Coronet Street were I spotted a TO LET sign outside number 41. We rented the basement studio in what was the a newly refurbished warehouse style space with only a skylight for light .

About a year later we took on the whole building of next door number 43. I had the top floor , Chaser on the middle floor and Somethin Else sound productions shared the ground floor with Marxman management.

For five years we worked hard and played hard, I can easily say this was my most productive and influential period of my life. By this time I’d met Janine who was literally the flyer queen. Her 2CV6 was littered with piles upon piles of flyers she was distributing for the likes of Dingwalls, The fez and Jazz 90 gigs. We soon became a wicked partnership with her touting skills and my designs we quickly revolutionised the art of club flying.

the name to the Blue Note. The property developers moved in and slowly derelict buildings we once dreamed of buying were suddenly snapped up without a blink of an eyelid and the area was on a downward spiral into gentrification. The ring of steel around the city meant that not only could the IRA get in but it also kept out the tea leaves. Which meant that they concentrated on the immediate area surrounding it ie Shoreditch. I had the top floor with a brilliant skylight perfect for seeing what I had and perfect for getting in (no bars!). Two burglaries later I’d had enough, by mid way through ‘95 I was gone for new adventures in west London.

My East end promise was exactly that it - but in reality didn’t really deliver - now whenever I’m in the area surrounded by the Chavs and fancy bars and restaurants I do think its a touch ironic that an area that was once favoured by a few rootsical creative individuals who set up shop there because it was cheap and working class is now dominated by self conscious be movers and shakers and so called opinion makers!

Give me back the old days any day!

We lived in Acton then and would travel by car to Coronet St, the journey took no longer than 30 minutes (20 late at night), there was no congestion charge and no parking meters or greedy attendents. The terminus later got took over by Irene as Lennies and gradually small eateries started cropping up - the hoagies in Wrong Wrong were a favourite for a while made by the mad Hanz! The Bass Clef eventually bowed down to the VAT man and Eddie Pillar moved in, changing

19/10/10 06:28:25

the stRongrooms

tina Spear

Vennessa Fristedt

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 56

19/10/10 06:28:53

project and exhibition The project celebrates the East End’s ever-changing visual and cultural landscape with particular emphasis on the ‘cultural migrants’ who made the area their home from the early 80s onwards. Many artists moved into the derelict East End of the 80s and early 90’s – raves, galleries in warehouses, pubs, political unrest - a do it yourself ethos, which had as much to do with necessity as choice – recreating in their wake, what is now referred to as ‘the East End’.

We view these ‘migrants’, (artists, musicians, bar/club owners, writers, designers, freeloaders; architects and property developers, gallerists, curators, and co.) as having a trans historical alliance with all those who came before – part of a continuous migration and diaspora into/out of the ‘East End’ Promise.’ A place that is equally loathed and loved, that always seems on the verge of falling apart, yet

somehow holds together, re-shaping itself in the process.

Instead of copying the highly edited, sexed-up narrative of events with its bias toward the already known, the usual tale that has been spun, we aim to reveal a much richer, more diverse history of the area/period. The point is to celebrate creative individuals NOW and not in thirty years time. We will attempt for the first time, to reveal a collective story: the subterranean, psychogeographical and historical DNA of an area between 1985-2000, and beyond.

The exhibition will take the form of a multi-layered installation, including art, photography, film/video, music, text, audio, archival and architectural elements, contemporary publications and ephemera. Much of this will never have been seen before, let alone brought together in its entirety.

The project also looks forwards and will include current work by key individuals, as well as a series of satellite events of clubs, live music, film screenings and performance art, with promoters and gallerists currently working in the East End.

‘East End Promise’ takes a new look at the seeming (and real) disorder of the East End, in the same way that one might view the creative chaos and detritus of say, Francis Bacon’s studio. The East End, the city, as a huge sprawling ‘studio’, an experiment in living and working, disorderly, messy, heterogeneous and creative. The exhibition assembles for the very first time, individuals, groups and spaces from different occupations and different timelines, past, present and future, confronting the audience and those involved with notions of how we actually interact, work and live.

One of the key tasks will be setting up of a ‘crime-board’ (for want of a better term), on which events, people and spaces will be collaboratively plotted. This will be adapted/edited over the course of the build up, with key people whose material/work we are using invited to give their take on the on-going map. This will function as a creative spatio-temporal mapping of the ‘East End’. At its completion the map will serve as curatorial guide and grid for the exhibition and satellite events.

Copyright Paul Sakoilsky/ourhistory 2010.

Ernesto Leal

Paul Sakoilsky

Rogan Jeans

Our History is the creation of Ernesto Leal and its aim is to both record and archive the collective memories of the individuals who inhabit the moving places and changing spaces of the city. Through the medium of the visual arts, Our History places maximum emphasis on the experiences of those who are directly affected by the continuously changing nature of the city. It sets out to celebrate, recognise and to tell the stories of ‘those who were there’.

Paul Sakoilsky, artist, writer and curator, has exhibited internationally, and is best known for ‘the dark times’ project (2007-), a psycho-political endeavour, at once personal and collaborative, works from which have been exhibited and published both across Europe and feature in collections worldwide. With grounding in philosophy, Sakoilsky produces works across several media, creating a rich interplay between the works that result. Following a period as a protégé of the major English twentiethcentury poet, George Barker, between 1994 and 2000 he acted as curator at the seminal 30 Underwood St Gallery, Shoreditch, where, along with shows of emerging artists, he was instrumental in organising the Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch’s first UK exhibition; which led to an ongoing relationship with the artist. (In 2009 Sakoilsky took part in the feature-Hermann Nitsch’, directed by Daniela Ambrosoli.) Recent curation includes ‘May Day: The Dark Times (Editor’s Choice 1)’, F-ISH gallery, Hastings, and a series of shows at RED Gallery, ‘OBJECT-CULTURE’ (April/May), ‘PRESS’ (May/June). He is now curating EAST END PROMISE, making works for upcoming UK and international shows and publications, and putting together the next edition of ‘the dark times: newspaper’.

Rogan Jeans is a seminal and innovative graphic designer.

From the outset of his career, his talents were recognised by a host of big brands and corporate companies, (Channel 4, BBC, Phonogram, Body shop, EMI, to name but a few), for whom he designed promotional materials. At the same time as working in the corporate sector, he found a personal, creative voice and artistic vision in designing promotional materials for the emergent, underground acid house/rave scene classic designs for Clink StreetRIP, Mr C’s seminal Plink Plonk Label and Voodoo parties.

His utilisation of a constructivist style created memorable promotional materials that contributed to the motivation of a whole movement. His passion for important socialpolitical concerns have also contributed to designs for Friends of the Earth, MIND, Shelter, Amnesty International.

His work continues to have resonance with society’s vital concerns.

ourhistory – East End Promise concept/co curator

Our History is a collaborative project that brings together creative practitioners from all walks of life who are then invited to take part in creating ‘Our History’. East End Promise is a continuation of the highly acclaimed and successful ‘Our History” Celebrating 20 Years of Acid House Graphic Design Exhibition. This was an exhibition which brought together some of the most iconic graphic design, taken from the original flyers used to publicised Raves and Acid House parties over the last 20years. Officially launched in November 2008 at the Huntingdon Project Gallery on Redchurch Street, East London. The exhibition ran over three days, received maximum press coverage and was visited by over 3000 people. In February2009 the exhibition moved to Selfridges UltraLounge Gallery Space as part of the ARTCORE show. Since then, Our History has travelled to the Time Out Cafe- Tokyo and the U-Dance Studios-Shanghai. ‘Our History’ 20 Years of Acid House Graphic Design Exhibition has to date been visited by over 10 000 people worldwide.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 57

curator

Art Direction & Graphics

After recovering from a long period of illness, Rogan Jeans is now Creative Director for ‘East End Promise’ and ‘the dark times: newspaper’. He is also currently rebranding Providence Row Housing Association, the Women Ahead Group, and designing promotion material for a host of galleries, musicians, and record labels.

19/10/10 06:28:54

CREDITS: Exhibition curated by Ernesto Leal & Paul Sakoilsky • East End Promise concept by Ernesto Leal • Exhibition hang by Paul Sakoilsky • Art Direction & Portrait Photography by Ernesto Leal • Art Direction & Design by Rogan Jeans • Marketing

by Jane Chattenton • Editorial Paul Sakoilsky with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly (with special thanks to Anastasia Sakoilska for sorting out her father’s crazy filing.) • Production: Richard Hübner • AV Production: Mark Korda, Dino De La Vega • Website tech: Ravindran Gauthaman Thanks to Reverend Paul Turp, R T Hatton-Gore and the trustees of St Leonard’s Church Shoreditch. Dominic Cools-Lartigue, Blanche Kennedy, Jaroslav Krampol, Juan Leal, Rossana Leal, Daniela Liberati, Lenka Maerovsla, Lee Mallett, Kevin Martin, Philip Medhurst, Rachel Newsome, Mario Noviello, Lydia Pietroforte, Brendan Quick, Anastasia Sakoilska, Rob Star, Annita Sung.

“Our History” would like to thank for your support : Nick Winters & Caroline O’Connor, WDP Ronco, Andy Tyrrel at Printellingence ltd., James Goff and team at Stirling Ackroyd, Robert Soning and Team at Londonewcastle, Giovanna Forte at The Shoreditch Ball, London SSS Thanks to the all the artists for your contributions and support and to the community in general.

Ernesto would like to thank Colette Bowens Leal, Oscar Nicholas Leal, Aoife Ofelia Leal and family Londonewcastle is a supporter of arts and cultural projects in the local community. As such, we are pleased to have made available the Londonewcastle Project Space - established for over two years in Redchurch Street - to East End Promise.

Artist Pages Catarlogue sec 3.indd 58

19/10/10 06:29:02

59 Catalogue Portraits.indd 59

19/10/10 14:42:32

60 Catalogue Portraits.indd 60

19/10/10 15:57:13

60 Catalogue Portraits.indd 60

19/10/10 15:57:13

62 Catalogue Portraits.indd 62

19/10/10 05:52:23

email: eastendpromise@gmail.com website: www.eastendpromise.com/forthcoming

ourhistory...