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jbjb Come and have a look at this here. This is the view. This is, when you were working
here, this, this, this actually made the whole thing sort of worthwhile. It s just fantastic
to work next to a river like this. You see, in Roman times, the river was considered to
be a, a goddess, so, em, when you work next to it, you really understand why, why this
is a goddess cause she s so lovely. And she tends to sort of keep you calm and tranquil
em, yeah, you know, it s a love affair. Just, just enjoy it. Just, just look at that, really
just enjoy that river, yeah, it s quiet, rippling, you know. Look at, look at the gulls. Even
the gulls are tranquil I notice s gone. Don t worry about it. Just take, take your picture.
That s it. Look at them. Look at that. All I know is that they are so happy. OK. Back
over here. You know, you need to know who I am, I m told. My name is Mike Nulty. I worked
here for, I m not quite sure how long. Let s, let s assume less than a year but more
than a day. I had a job working, as like a gallery administrator but they also had the
music business that I used to run at the same time. And I had an office here, so I was sort
of split between the two of them. The real leader here was a guy called David Dawson
who went to Leeds Art College at the same time I did. But David, David was the key man.
I mean, I have to say that. He really really was the man and that s, all, all bow down
to David Dawson. Is that OK David? Right Brian, you ve cost your point. Come and have a look
at the space. Now when this was a gallery, it stretched through quite a bit further back
but it was, it was an interesting space because, over here, let me come round, over that side,
that s where David Dawson actually lived. It was obviously covered in. We had partitions
then. Think there was bathroom and all the facilities you needed, and a kitchen. But
David actually lived on site. It was illegal, but hey, you did things legally. The rest
of the size of the space there was, it was all geared up for, for, for literally, anything
we wanted. Painting, photographs. David did a lot of work in photography. That was his,
his big thing. So we normally had a lot of photography work. Sometimes these beams, these
are cast iron, you could actually put panels behind them so that you could actually get
more, more, more hanging space. Er, when there were performances, and we did a lot of performances
in those days and er, there s a, there s a, there s a list available on the website, that,
what had actually happened was that er, people would come in. The, it was free form performance
space. The artistes, or who, whoever was doing it, would tend to, sort of stay in that area
there, which was the kitchen, bedroom, whatever and then come out and do their work. We d
normally have audiences of say twenty people. It was quite small. Quite tidy. But for the
big events, then you could have up to a hundred people, and, and that s quite normal. Was
er, in those days in Wapping, there was a sort of real community. Er, there s an artists
community. It was, it was very poor. There was old warehouses. There were lots of studios
here. People sharing warehouse space as studios, studio, they divided everything up. So people
who were literally living on benefits would actually make, you know, make a living just
about. So this space, there was two sides to it, er, we had this side which was the
gallery and then there was another part of the lease which was the roadside, which is,
er, not worth looking at these days, em, that was er s say, used for other purposes. The,
ah, what else to tell you, you know. Er at one point we had about ten people working
here on a job creation scheme. It er, it was great. It lasted about nine months. Em, er,
everybody got involved in doing a little piece of everything. Mm sadly, the whole project
came to an end in eighty-two, eighty-three. Eighty-three. When there was a major fire
above here and of course, that damaged the whole roof. So the whole thing then was, was
cleared out and er, a lot of the stuff that was actually in here at that stage was fire
damaged, so, you know, there was that, the whole record of what actually went on here
disappeared. Which is very sad. But it was, it was quite a good space. But come on down
this end and you get an idea of what it was like to work here. s quite big. Takes a long
time to walk down here. And this is, this is classically, it s, it s like a New York
loft, but you know, have a look over there. See that, you could do a panorama, that was,
that, this is, this is how nice it could actually be. This is one of the best work spaces I
ve ever been in. So you imagine, that s, that s blocked off, so there, so, so to this side,
the office section, you know, which is where five, six people were working all the time
was with those two windows. Now, interestingly, if you actually go down to Wapping Underground
Station, you ll see where there s a picture of one of the, one of the panels that they
have, which looks very like this place. It s certainly different then the time I was
here, but it may have been people that moved in later and and took the space over, but
em, yah. That s the B2. There were famous people like Derek Jarman. Yes, Derek Jarman
came here. And who else? William Burroughs was probably the most famous. We had the project,
I mean there were lots of curators here, so I can t remember everybody s names, my apologies
lads. But we had em, the Burroughs there was Fine Art Academy which was part, part performed
here, part performed down in Brixton, and then part of also in Manchester at em, the
Hacienda with the Factory. There was a big mix. The Factory had all the money to be able
to afford to do it. But Burroughs came here and stayed, and em you know, the story goes
that when Burroughs arrived, Burroughs had a habit that he needed to look after, so the
first trip was he came straight from the, er, from the airport in a taxi to Harley Street
where he met his doctor and er, was appropriately prescribed what he needed and he was happy
for the rest of the period. So eh, and that was the sort of working inside the law, most
of the time, but actually, you know, making sure that things could happen that er, you
know, otherwise wouldn Derek, Derek Jarman, who was an absolute sweetie, I remember him
quite well, er, but remember, I was only an administrator, you know. I wasn t one of the,
the, the, the celebs, you know. I was one of the, you know, the sort of head down doing
things, make sure it happens. Derek, I remember Derek s first big exhibition. I mean, literally
where you are standing now, there was, we had a series of his big pictures, you know,
the big Dorby pictures, and, they are, they are quite extraordinary things. Em, not pretty,
I would say, but very full of life, em really quite amazing. And of course the other thing
that, that, that, er, always remember of, of Derek s work is, is his Super 8 videos,
that was always projected here. And I ve probably seen every film he made because it was like
a, the house video Super 8, you know, sort of, is a film, Super 8 film maker and all
the stuff we tested out, projected was was here. Er, and of course, you know, we had
a, people would come in, there was, you know, it was easy you know, came in, had a look,
you know, went, came, went, you know hey. How did you feel, working in such an environment.
Well, if, it was just normal. I mean, you know, when, you know, it s, it s like you
just take, take what comes to you as as natural. Completely natural. I mean, you know. This
was, you know, this is where it worked, you know, I mean, this was the, the, the, the
end of the Seventies, early Eighties which was the independent, in the days, you know,
so Fracture Records, everything was happening at that point, Mute was going on, all that
type of thing so, it was, it was expected that, you know, you actually got on with doing
something different, you know. So, it was hard cause it was, there was no money around,
you know, apart from the, the, the final days of the GLC Em, I remember we got some Pink
Wedge funding at some point from the GLC to do some work and there was bits and pieces
came in that kept the thing going, you know. It wasn t er, sort of strictly speaking a
commercial operation at, at all, but it wasn t supposed to be. Em, actually working, there
was, em, people because of the time, were quite, you could get quite fractious, if people
were quite, I mean, not everybody was, er, completely stable. There was a lot of people
with er em, you know, did bring their, their personal lives to work with them which was,
again, expected and that wasn t an issue, you know, but you just sort of go along with
it and make the best of it, you know. And there, and there was a lot of, sort of, trying
to talk to people to, you know, make sure everybody s happy. I think, generally speaking,
most people were reasonably happy. How different was it from your home in North West England.
Oh, I d left there years before then. I d been living in New York before I came here.
So for me it was just like a bit, bit more like New York where they spoke English, you
know. So I, I, it, to me, I actually moved from New York to Holland and then back to
London, to here, to sort of, you know, so my move back to England coincided with the
Brixton riots, which was quite interesting. And I was living in Brixton at the time. So
I moved from Brixton to come and live in Wapping which is where I live now. So were you always
involved in the arts environment. To some degree. Yah. So what was it you did in New
York. Oh, I, I em, I d been doing er I started as, as an intern at the Kitchen Center for
video, dance and music cause I had done the arts administration course at City University,
the sort of MBE, A arts equivalent, whatever it was. And er, but I stayed. I didn t come
back and finish the course because I was having too good a time in New York which, of course,
you do, cause it s a great place. So after a few years, eventually, you know, you get
kicked out and em, you end up in a place like Holland. But that s when, you know, I d run
a music business, so that came here. But that were the final days of music business were,
were here with, I think, the final shout was the Fine Art Academy. That type of thing.
So is there a local community of LGBT artists. There used to be. There used to be quite a
big group, you know, of artists living here. It was possible to live here cheaply then.
Er, nowadays, there s two or three, you know, sort of er remnants, you might say, left here
who, who knew, still paint, yeah, still, still do, do their own art. Keep busy, you know.
Em, them, most people have day jobs nowadays, you know, and that s what happens. But with
all the changes, you re still staying. Well, yeah. Why not? I don t know? Why not? the,
the river, you know. I mean, it s the river. You know, you can, you can go, you can, we
have a beach. A proper sand beach. Very good, you know. It s a secret though. Don t tell
anybody about it. But when the tide, it s tidal, So you know, it s like six metre tide
I think you get? So you know, this is high tide now. It goes down six metres and there
s a sandy beach out there. You go and sit on it in the sun. It s great, you know. But
also Wapping is cut off from the main part by of London the Highway, Ratcliffe Highway
across the top here. So, you know, there, there s no through traffic. So it s actually
very quiet corner of the world. And after this place burnt down, where did you go. Oh,
I, I d actually already moved on at that point so er, so I ended up working on a project
south of the river for a while and then I ended up moving into, that s when I worked
for, after working for Epic in the film side, then video, moving into Moving Picture Company
and then to Carlton, and Black Rod and a few other people. A lot of our interviewees are
quite interested in local issues but you seem to be quite international? both. Why I mean,
I m very much involved in, in the er, local community, the, the, the business, you know,
the hard end of it. We have some issues with anti-social behaviour so I m very much involved
working with, on the Anti-Social Behaviour Special Interest Group to make sure our wonderful
police force actually do, and, and, they are, they are actually good, I m afraid to say,
em, but to make sure that the kids who are getting into trouble are actually, you know,
sort of the support goes in, which is what they, the Met police do nowadays, rather than
just busting them and sending them to prison. You know, I mean, hey. Soon as you get a criminal
record you re screwed. I am allowed to swear aren t I? Yeah, good. And nobody wants to
get a criminal record. So that, that s the whole thing, stopping the kids getting involved,
you know, too far down the line. And also, you know, it hacks people off. You get this,
spiral of, as we nee had, I m going to say bad things now. We, round here a lot of the,
the property was Counc, is Council. It s actually owned by Tower Hamlets and, there was a, a
spiral where you, you would actually have Tower Hamlets Council s Housing staff say
that people who live in these buildings are, they are animals and er, they want to live
like animals. And let s, we are going to let them treat them like animals. And then you
get the. the actual residents who are saying they don t care about us. They treat us like
animals. So why should we put up with this and they don t care. However, recently, that
was a bit of propaganda, it s moved, moved, moved to an ALMO, which is Tower Hamlets Homes,
which isa complete new team of people, completely radical new world view. So well, they do,
they are trying. They are actually trying quite hard given the constraints that they
ve got. So, anyways, a new, new, new, completely new group of people come in. The place is
that they re actually cleaning things properly, you know. Everything s suddenly, you know,
it s a bit like the old Soviet Union, it fell to bits and then, you know, now it s capitalism,
I don t know that s a good thing, but you know, now it s started to work properly, slowly,
so I m very much involved with that type of thing. That s a yeah, but er, you know. I
still quite enjoy a job in LA or something. PAGE PAGE gdY0 gdY0 gdY0 &`#$ gdY0 gdY0 :pY0
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