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- [00:00]
A
I wanted to preserve the history for future generations for eccentricity reasons, from one eccentric to another. And it took an eccentric woman to buy this property and to see the beauty in it and to preserve it. I get dads coming by on push bikes with their kids, telling them about the Mole man and telling them about the story. We became like rock stars, I think. Yeah, it just, it took its toll on the both of us. It had a strain on the relationship. It just became really traumatic. But there's nothing like designing your own space. I just couldn't live in someone else's footprint. It's like I design the life I want to live and I'm designing the space that I want to live in.
- [00:50]
B
Hi everyone and welcome to a new episode of Homing with Me, Matt Gibbard. Today's guest is someone I've been hoping to get on the podcast for a long time now. So I'm very pleased to welcome the brilliant Sue Webster. Sue found fame, of course, working alongside her husband, Tim Noble, as part of the post YBA generation of artists in the late 90s. Noble and Webster became known for their anarchic approach to art and life, creating ingenious self portraits from found objects and discarded rubbish. Sue's also had a big impact on the architecture world. She and Tim built an iconic modern house in Shoreditch called the Dirty House, which very much helped define that area as the epicenter of London's art scene. And in recent years, she's created an equally radical home for herself called the Mole House. It's famous for being the place where the so called Mole man of Hackney spent 40 years digging a massive network of underground tunnels. And Sue's added her own layers of modernity over the top. We filmed this podcast in her studio, which is downstairs in the house. If you can. I really recommend watching this one on our YouTube channel because seeing sue in her bright apple green tracksuit surrounded by her massive self portraits really brings it to life. I think we also, as always, filmed a house tour to go with the episode. If you've been thinking about signing up with Homing on Patreon, this could be a really good time to do it. I think it's the most fantastic house. You'll also get access to the full archive of home tours with many of our previous guests as well. So if that's of interest, do head over to patreon.com homingwithmat I love this episode. It's raw, it's very honest and, and it's an amazing life story. I think we do cover some adult themes and there's a bit of fruity language, so maybe not one to listen to when the kids are around. Here it is. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Hi, Sue.
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A
Hello.
- [02:58]
B
Thanks so much for doing this. It's very exciting to be here in your house.
- [03:02]
A
Okay.
- [03:03]
B
And we're just to set the scene. We're in the basement, which is your studio space in your incredible house, which is known as the mole house. And we'll come on to that later on. But I want to take you back first of all, because it's always really instructive to start at the beginning. You have, to my mind, created a couple of the most iconic modern houses in London. But where did you start in terms of home?
- [03:29]
A
So my dad is an electrician. He's not alive anymore, but my dad was an electrician. His dad left home when he was very little and so, and this was, I guess just after the Second World War. My dad was quite intelligent, but he couldn't afford. He just couldn't afford to go into further education because he had to leave home, get a job and support his mum sort of thing and the family. So there was all this, that sort of background come from proper, you know, inner city Leicester. And I guess growing up, my dad, he had bigger aspirations, but he was always, I think he resented the fact that he wasn't able to ever go into further education. His development as a human being was, I guess his intellectual development was stunted by that. So I think he carried a chip around with him. So my dad had this thing where he was always. He was always trying to better the family situation. He had this. He had this fire inside of him because of his own restrictions growing up and he wasn't able to do what he wanted to do. And so he was constantly trying to buy a house, get better and then make some money, sell it and then move into another neighborhood. So I think I was. By the time I came along, I was in the. Not the same house that my sister was born in, we was in another one. So we'd moved out of the city center and into a little village. So I went to a village school and my brother came along. And then my dad bought a plot of land in another part of Leicester and thought, I'm going to build a house on this. And so, you know, it must have come from that, my need to. That sort of thing. I don't know. So my dad asked my grandfather to build a timber framed house. So they built a tim, which was Quite revolutionary in the 70s, I think. So while they were saving the money to do this, we moved out of the house. And we first lived in a block of flats and one of my early members was climbing a tree and jumping off a wall and I think knocking one of my teeth out. And then we went from the. To save more money. While my dad was trying to build this house, we moved into caravan. So there was a mobile home on the plot of land where my mum and dad lived. And that was where the little kitchen was, and they had a bedroom in there. And then there was a plank of wood that joined it with a tiny caravan where the three kids. We used to sleep in the tiny caravan. And if he wanted to go to the toilet, we'd have to come out at night and walk the plank into the big caravan. Yeah. And I just remember, like, it was fab because my sister had a transistor radio and we would just stay up all night, you know, listening to it must have been John Peel. And, you know, like, it felt really illegal because the parents didn't know what time it was that we were going to bed. And. Yeah. So listening to John Peel and listening to the really early, like, indie music that his musical choice, his tastes, I guess, rubbed off on me, that sort of weird sort of music that he used to play. So we moved around quite a lot as my dad had aspirations for the family. So I was always the new girl at school. And I remember just. I found it quite difficult fitting in, you know, because you were growing up, kids had gangs, didn't they? And, you know, I suddenly came into the clique a bit late. And it didn't help that we were living in caravan at the time when we moved to the area where we sort of live the long, I live the longest, if you like, before leaving home eventually and going to art school. So that was that when my dad built that house for us.
- [07:23]
B
So living in a caravan, I mean, the obvious question is, were you able to find enough space for yourself? Cause it's obviously quite intense because it's so tight.
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A
Well, we had one. I think it was one acre of land, plot of land that my dad bought.
- [07:37]
B
Okay.
- [07:37]
A
I really don't have much memories of that house being built, but I know my granddad did the timber frame. My dad, obviously was the electrician and he just got in friends to help build it. The brickwork on the outside, but the plot of land was right next to a park. And so I was really good at football, so I just used to hit the ball and next to us was lots of garages. So I just remember going out on my own, kicking the ball against garages like all day. And then someone came along and said, do you want to come and play football on the park with us? David Shackleton, never forget him. So then, yeah, then I had some friends. But we were kind of known as the Gypos because we lived in the caravan. But my dad was a massive Bob Dylan fan and so he wanted to name the house, not give it a number.
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B
Yeah.
- [08:32]
A
And he named it Hard Rain after a Bob Dylan track, really. But before we moved into the house, we had Hard Rain written on an A4 piece of paper in the window of the mobile home. So the postman would deliver our mail to Hard Rain the caravan down the bottom of this cul de sac, which was next to the playing fields where we. Yeah, so, yeah, no, it wasn't restricting. No, I don't really think so. I never thought it was because, you know, we were little and we used to go out and play football.
- [08:59]
B
Yeah. So have you got one sister or
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A
one sister, one brother. One sister, one brother, older sister, younger brother.
- [09:07]
B
Okay, so you're in the middle.
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A
The problem child
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B
is that. Is that I always think middle children
- [09:15]
A
always get a hard time. Yeah. Because like, you know, the first one, the firstborn is always the one that you're like, you. You treat with like kid gloves, don't you? Oh, my God. Parents never had a child before. So you go through that whole thing. By the time the second one comes along, it's like, oh, just leave them to get on with it really. And then the third one comes along and it's like, oh, you just reminded of how cute babies are again, aren't you? Sort of thing. So my brother was really, you know. Yeah. And of course he was the boy, which obviously the two girls and then it was the boy. So the novelty of having a boy and. Yeah. And he was like, oh, the little Stuart. Oh, he's not. He's much. He towers over me and Karen now. Yeah, he's the tallest.
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B
So when you say that you were the problem child, is that in all seriousness, was that how you sort of cast yourself or is that how others cast you?
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A
I just think that it's a well known fact, isn't it, that second born. There's a firstborn, second born theory, isn't there?
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B
Yeah.
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A
About the. And the firstborns. Tim was a second born and he's got an older brother. And it's kind of like I always think. And it's really true. I've lived that. And firstborns are always. They like police you.
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B
Yeah, sure.
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A
You know, like we are, you know we are. We know the, we know the ropes, you know, we've, you know, and although my sister was a complete and utter. She was quite a tearaway anyway. I mean she got pregnant in her teens.
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B
Okay.
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A
So I mean, but she, you know, they are the. She's now. My mother and father aren't alive anymore. So she's the oldest of the family. Yeah, she's a bit like what she called Polly out of Peaky Blinders, I have to remind her. Got that role on Polly.
- [10:55]
B
So where does your mum come into this picture then?
- [10:59]
A
My mum's family, they ran a post office in Leicester, on the outskirts of Leicester. My granddad was a carpenter. My granddad built his own house out of wood and he made patterns out of the wood. Like it's incredible when I think back and I look at photographs of it, they didn't have any wallpaper, so he made wooden patterns made out like they were all geometric. So I mean my granddad was really strict. I think he must have been. I think he was in the army and of Irish descent. So I just remember visiting them and going down into my granddad's workshop and it just to have that smell of wood and of like stuff that, you know, preservative. And they had apple trees on their land and so they were very. They were actually quite self sufficient. Yeah. By the time I was born and brought up, I. They didn't run the post office anymore. They lived in their wooden house and grew their own food. It was incredible.
- [12:05]
B
What was she like, your mum?
- [12:07]
A
My mum worked in a factory. So again didn't have an education, didn't go to college or anything like that. So my mum worked in the hosiery factory. She was an overlocker. You know hosiery, they make socks and stuff, don't they? Yeah. So she worked and then met my dad and then that was that. So my mum was really like at home. She didn't have a career or anything. So she brought us up and took us around town and yeah, so it was really me dad that I looked up to, not my mum growing up. And people used to say, I'm going to the theater with my mum and all this sort of going out to dinner with my mum. I never had that. I used to really get bitter about it. I didn't have that relationship with my own mum. But on the other hand I had that relationship with my dad. Instead. So my dad was really heavily into music and so he, you know, he would always have amazing record collection. It would always be playing Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and all the other singers, you know, Joan Baez, stuff like that. And my dad would like just go and go to concerts. I remember the Beatles, I mean not that was before my time but the Beatles played Leicester de Montfort hall twice and my dad went to see the Beatles and my mum didn't want to go so he took me auntie and they made it into the Leicester Mercury. So it's in my crime scene. I've got this. My grandma always had this black and white photograph cut out of the newspaper on the fridge and it was me dad and me auntie Sylvia. She had a leopard skin coat on. And they were in the audience when the Beatles played Lester to Mount Foot hall in the 60s.
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B
Yeah, amazing.
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A
Yeah, amazing. And my mum didn't want to go and I was like bloody typical. Missed out on a piece of cultural history. Yeah.
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B
I read something where you said something about your mum that you weren't sure about the way that she was looked after by a man. You said in an interview I read. So was there something about. I mean do you.
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A
Oh, the power dynamics within the house.
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B
Yeah. I'm just thinking about how, you know, you said you felt maybe more attached to your dad in some way. Did you think that she wasn't as independent as she could have been?
- [14:14]
A
No, not at all. But then again that was the 70s growing up and I guess, you know, that was. Or just where I grew up there were no female women that run their own businesses. You know, my dad eventually, you know, he left the electrical company that was working for and then set up on his own business. So he very much had bigger aspirations. Set up his own business, eventually got his own workshop and I used to work for him in the holidays. I had part time jobs working for me dad. I used to love it. I used to love. My dad used to work at the Findus fish factory in Grimsby in the freezer department. I mean he got contracts so he did. That was one of them. And he used to come home with like car full of like unidentified food without that had missed the labeling process. Tins of this and frozen stuff that we used to put in the freezer and it was like Russian roulette. Is it dog food? Is it human food? We don't know until it thaws out. So pretty much growing up on a diet of tinned and frozen food and I still eat, I mean my freezer Is full of frozen food. I mean, I still love frozen food. Yeah, Fish fingers, frozen everything. Yeah, love it.
- [15:33]
B
That's fantastic.
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A
But yeah, we had dodgy dinners, so. Yeah. Cause my mum was not a cook. No, but going back to your question, I think that was everyone's mum, you know, especially where, you know, in the world, the small little world which we thought was the center of the universe. I thought that that was it, you know, that was what mums did. Mums dragged the kids around to shops and dad met for lunch with their mums. You know, we used to meet two grandmas in town and they used to make sandwiches and then we used to go meet in the caf at British Home Stores or wherever. They'd order a pot of tea and then my mum, I'd get his kick under the table and she passed me a sandwich because they couldn't afford to buy food from the glitter shame stores cafe. We got caught once and it was awful. Couldn't go back again. Yeah.
- [16:30]
B
So you've described a bit of sort of shape shifting that went on because you moved around a bit and you briefly touched on it there. That school wasn't always easiest. So what was school like for you? Describe that. Did you feel like an outsider somehow?
- [16:42]
A
Well, I mean, I guess because we moved about different areas of Leicester. I mean never outside of Leicester, but like from one end of Leicester to the other seemed like the end of the world. You know, we'd left. So everybody that I grew up with I'd have to leave behind and move to the other side of Leicester. We were I think South Leicester, Wigston. And then we moved to northern North Leicester, which is near Loughborough, you know, where they hey up me duck. And I was like, hey up? What you mean hey up? You know, it was quite funny. Mum and dad used to call each other duck. I was like. And then us chick and it was like really weird. But so you had to join a new school. That's right. And then everybody had already grew up by the time they were 10. They'd been like together and whatever. And so you were like. Yeah, we were the gypos that came to school. My sister fitted in better than me because she smoked. That was the difference. Yeah, you were a bit like Arda, considered a little bit tougher.
- [17:43]
B
Why didn't you?
- [17:44]
A
I just never had the. No, I just never got into it. No. Never. Never smoked, did you?
- [17:50]
B
I did a long time ago.
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A
Yeah. Yeah, I just. It was one of them things. It just never appealed to me. Smoking.
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B
Yeah. So how did that Manifest itself. Then you, like, feeling like you weren't fitting in. What, did you get bullied or what was it like?
- [18:03]
A
Well, I was the only one that got my mum's black hair. So I had long black hair and thick black eyebrows that joined in the middle. So then they. And it was mainly boys called me a witch because of the eyebrows. So I'd wander around school playground. Not. It was weird. It's like everyone had made their group sort of thing, their friends, and so I would just be the one wandering around with the other person that no one wanted to talk to, kind of thing. And you'd be sitting on your own at lunchtime and stuff like that. And I'd try and find my sister and my sister would inevitably be behind the bike sheds with a fag. And I go, oh, so and so's calling me names or something like that. And she'd come marching out, you know, with her gang. Don't you ever speak to my effing sister like that, you know. So I always run to my sister for help. She fitted in, you know, easier than me. And you don't want to keep running to your sister. So then I started pretending to be ill so that I go home. Okay, so I didn't want to go to school. I'd either pretend to be ill so that I didn't have to go to school or I just, like, end up at the headmistress's office and wait for me mum to pick me up or something like that to go home, back to the caravan. Yeah. So it became a thing where I just didn't want to go to school. Yeah.
- [19:27]
B
So I think you were 13, weren't you, when you were taken into psychiatric care, Is that right?
- [19:31]
A
Yeah, 13 or 14, I can't remember. But yeah. So it kind of. The thing is, I pretended to be ill and then eventually I became ill. It's that weird thing where I made myself ill. I think I actually made myself really ill. Yeah. And it did something to my head and it just manifested itself into a proper illness, a psychiatric illness, if you like. And it became very dangerous. And so I had to be taken away from and put in. I had to go and see a psychiatrist when I was little, which was awful. It's not like now where people admit to all that stuff and it's cool and trendy. I'm in therapy and all that, you know, later in life, you know, everybody's got a bloody therapist. But then it was like. It was a shame. I was ashamed of it. I had to be Taken out of school and I couldn't tell anyone what was happening and I had to go. And then my mum would take me to see the psychiatrist. And then I didn't know. I couldn't. I was too embarrassed to talk about my feelings, you know. Cause I wasn't brought up like that and I was too young to. Yeah. So I used to sit in silence. Of course, then it was. Made matters worse. Cause I wasn't conforming, if you like. And then I was put on medication, which was even worse. Then I'd fall asleep at school. So the whole thing just spiraled into, like this terrible thing, you know, and it got worse. I got taken out of school and put into psychiatric care with a load of nutters.
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B
I mean, it's so tough, sue, because it's so young, isn't it?
- [21:00]
A
Yeah. Looking back, because you didn't know what was going on and you didn't know how to get out of it. And I. I felt like I'd almost brought it on myself because I was not wanting to go to school. So I was faking illnesses. And then eventually, just then, eventually it became a real illness. Yeah. I went down a sort of dark hole. Yeah.
- [21:19]
B
I find that so interesting, though, that you've taken it on yourself, haven't you? You're sort of implying that it was something that you manifested or that was your fault somehow.
- [21:27]
A
Yeah. But where did it come from? Because people say, what's the matter? When you talk to a psychiatrist? Or you. Your parents were. Parents actually got. My dad got very, very frustrated because he couldn't get to the bottom of it, what was making me ill, sort of thing. Because it was almost like there was no answer. I couldn't give an answer. I still can't sort of thing. But I guess looking back at it, it was. I can only sort of think of it as being like. Yeah. Feeling very isolated, I suppose, and feeling not accepted and not wanted. I mean, it's very much wanted at home, but it was. I think school could be quite. People can be quite evil. Yeah, I sensed that a lot growing up, you know, I used to carry stones in my pocket that I could rub to give me a bit of strength, you know, Sort of like. I used to carry stones around with me, so if I felt odd, you know, I'd just rub the stones to give me some sort, you know. I guess people wear crystals and stuff like that, don't they?
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B
Yeah.
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A
But I used to sense it when I was much older that people gave off a bad aura. I could sense it And I thought, I don't want to go near them. I don't want to be in the same room as that. I started sensing this sort of like, yeah, really weird. And you had to avoid people. Yeah. Because people can be quite cruel. Yeah. And maybe not even intentionally, just especially if they're in a gang, you know.
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B
So it sounds like that culturally and within your family and that time in general, you would have felt a real sense of shame. Did you feel that? Did you feel like there was something, you were broken in some way?
- [23:05]
A
Not at time, no. No. I just didn't know what was happening really, to me. And also, when you were being put on medication, the medication was supposed to be there to help you, but they give you sort of downers and they. If you liked sleeping pills as well. I was on sleeping pills. And they get the bloody doses wrong. You know, I couldn't wake up in the morning. I have to go to school and fall asleep in the lesson. Then I get told off by the teachers. Teachers weren't aware of what was happening sort of thing. So then they just thought that I was being naughty. Yeah. It's one of them. It just spirals, doesn't it? And you can't tell them because you're too embarrassed sort of thing to tell them what was going. What's happening to you. I couldn't tell them that I was seeing a psychiatrist. I mean, you know, it was just too embarrassing. It's too. Yeah. Too. Yeah. I don't know. I think my dad had to write a letter in the end and tell the teacher, and then that was okay. Cause I always used to. It always used to happen in double chemistry. So the teacher just thought I was Skyrim off.
- [24:09]
B
Okay.
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A
Didn't realize that. So I got into trouble at school without actually. Because I couldn't tell them what was happening.
- [24:16]
B
Oh, I see.
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A
Eventually. Yeah.
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B
That's so hard.
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A
Yeah. Where does art come into this as a savior? Well, I always drew. I mean, it was something that I was always good at, drawing, just always drew. But again, didn't know that there was ever gonna be a end result there. Like I say, I love playing football, but that wasn't allowed, you know, Wasn't allowed to play football at school because that was for the boys, really. Yeah. Yeah. Not until now, where it's now encouraged, isn't it? But I just couldn't stand why I wasn't allowed to be in the boys team. Cause I was as good as they were. I loved playing football. It was a thing that I enjoyed. And then When I was at school and the boys were outside playing football and I was like, why can't I go out and play football? And they're like, no, no, no, the girl's got to stay in and learn to. And I was like, that's not fair. I remember actually saying that to the teachers. That's not fair. But of course, they're the rules. The girls had to stay in. Boys were allowed to go and play outside. And it was. We had to learn to be homekeepers. Fucking learn to sew. Yeah. Or cook. I mean, it's awful, isn't it, when you think about it nowadays?
- [25:27]
B
Yeah. It's staggering, really.
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A
There's an England women's team and they're bloody brilliant, you know. And I just think, wow, you know? So, yeah, so that was another kind of blockage. It's like, I'm not allowed to do what I want to do. I'm not allowed to play football, you know, or rugby. I love playing rugby as well. I wasn't encouraged to do art. I remember doing this drawing and my dad not commenting on it because I don't think he knew how to. It wasn't a thing. We weren't taken to galleries growing up. It wasn't on the agenda. We were taken to football matches.
- [25:59]
B
Okay.
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A
Which was great. And concerts. So music was a big thing. My dad, like I said, big Leonard Cohen, big Bob Dylan fan. So I saw Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen when I was very young.
- [26:11]
B
Well, on music, then let's talk about punk rock. Cause this was a big thing for you, wasn't it?
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A
I mean, my sister was into the Bay City Rollers. I mean, I was luckily never subscribed to any of that shit because I was too young. Right. I remember seeing a picture of Susie Quattro or I might have even seen Susie Quattro on Tiswas or something like that. And thinking, wow, there's a woman in an all in one leather jumpsuit with a guitar and she's called Susie and I'm called Sue. Right. So that's. All right.
- [26:49]
B
Well, so speaking of people that are almost called sue, so Susie and the Banshees, wasn't it? That really captured that.
- [26:55]
A
Well, I think that was a band. So Susie sue was like my idea of what my mother should look like. Jet black hair, cropped hair that was black already and then dyed even blacker. Like I said, I was the only. I adopted my mum's jet black hair. And my sister had a mousy brown and my brother was blonde, so I had the black jeans thank God. Yeah. And so when I first set eyes on Suzie sue, it was in the pages of the Enemy and it was like cropped black hair and Cleopatra style makeup and just wearing almost like underwear, you know, like a bra on the outside of your clothes and thigh high patent leather boots with a killer heel. On stage, you know, strutting her stuff, it was just like. It was like someone had broke the fourth wall down for me. And I just became obsessed. And I was also. When I was institutionalized, so I came out first time and then was home for a bit and then went. Had to go back into another hospital away from home. And I used to, in Cambridge and I used to, you know, when I was allowed out, just, just walk around the record shops. And my first T shirt I bought was Susie and the Banshees T shirt. I thought, you know, when I, when I get out I was like wearing the. I had the Banshees T shirt and the headband and. Yeah, so it kind of became a bit of a savior really. She did. I kind of aspired to that look to that attitude and she was a strong female figure and I hadn't got a strong female figure in my life because I guess my mother was a. Yeah, I mean, she was a homemaker and my dad had the command of the house sort of thing. So it was quite a. It was quite a revelation to see that women were allowed to be outspoken and in front a band. Be in front of a band with the men behind.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so. Yeah, and so I just became. When I came out of the Adderbrookes Hospital, I just became. It just became the thing that I latched onto to pull me through. And I just became completely and utterly obsessed by the band. And if they were, you know, vhs, we had a VHS video recorder at home. And if Susie the Banshees ever appear, you get wind that like, it's probably in the newspaper, Susie's gonna be on Top of the Pops. Susie's gonna be on this. I'd just press record and I would record everything on VHS tape. So I had this showreel of Susie the Banshees and. And I would spend all my money on buying their records. And when I got old enough, seeing them live as many times as possible. And so it just became this obsession and whoever I'm. And I used to go on my, you know, I used to persuade people from school to come with me to see the band. You know, I remember the first time I saw them in 1983, it was at the Royal Albert hall. And it was six quid. And I persuaded Jason Thompson to come with me, who was in love with me, and he shaved his hair into a Mohican. And we paid six quid for those tickets and it was six quid to get the coach there and back from Leicester. I mean, wow, it was amazing. I still got the concert ticket. I've actually still got the bus ticket as well. I love that because, you know, these were like. This is like. For me, I could never understand why people wouldn't keep these things. This was like. This meant something. I blu tacked them on the bedroom wall. All my ticket or my concert tickets. But you blue tack them to the wall, you know, next to the posters, next to your records. These were like. These were my trophies. These were my. Like, yeah, I made it all the way to London and back, you know, and it was six quid. Can't believe it.
- [30:58]
B
I want to take you to art college now.
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A
Yes.
- [31:01]
B
On the first day there, I believe.
- [31:04]
A
Yes.
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B
You met a guy called Tim Noble.
- [31:06]
A
Exactly.
- [31:07]
B
Tell us about that.
- [31:08]
A
I was actually in Europe. I mean, going to art school and doing a degree was something that was never, ever mentioned in my household because nobody had ever done it before. My mum and dad hadn't done it. My older sister didn't leave home and go into further education. So it was my art teacher that encouraged me to stay on and do A levels because I was going to leave school and get a job, you know, in advertising, because I really like advertising. I like logos and things. So I was going to get a job right at the bottom of the. I don't know, I think I got a couple of job interviews and my art teacher was like, well, I think I was 16. And she was like, well, you thought about staying on and do A levels. And so I did. So I stayed on to do A levels. And that in itself was like, you can do art all day, not just one of the lessons or, you know, you have a day and then, you know, you do double art or you do art for three hours in the week or something. But to actually. I remember that massive leap of being able to go into the art class at school all day. It was just amazing. Wow. I can just do art all day. And I did A level art and A level design. And then my portfolio was. My teacher said, well, why don't you apply to go to do a degree? And I was like, I don't know what that is. And so she encouraged me to send my portfolio off. I did a foundation course. So I got into foundation at Leicester Polytechnic. And they said your portfolio is good enough that you can go straight to do a degree. But I didn't want to because I didn't know what I wanted to do a degree in. So the foundation course in Leicester, Polly, was fantastic because you can do a. You do a few weeks of design, a few weeks of fashion, a few weeks of building things, and I thought I was going to end up being a graphic designer. I wanted to do record sleeves or something like that because that was the only thing that I could think of. But my tutors said, well, you actually should apply to do a degree in fine art. And I had no idea what that meant, you know, because I was really good at, like, drawing and painting. So I applied to do a degree in fine art. I didn't want to go to London. I didn't know London. I had no family in London, I had no friends in London. So I applied to go to art school in Nottingham because Nottingham was the next town from Leicester and I knew Nottingham because I used to go and see bands there. So I applied to do fine art at Nottingham Polytechnic. I remember putting my canvases in the back of my dad's Datsun estate and driving, because I passed my driving test at this point and I put my huge canvases in the back of my dad's estate and walked into my interview with all my canvases propped up. You wouldn't do that now because everything's online, isn't it? But I mean, yeah, I remember, like, coming out, unloading the car, walking into my. My interview with. I got a place at Nottingham Poly. Yeah. And when we had to go and enroll, I was a day late because I'd been in Europe watching Susie the Banshees on tour. Of course, I went with a boyfriend at the time and we went to Amsterdam, Brussels and Bonn in Germany. We never made it to Bonn because we got wasted on space cookies in Amsterdam. And then I missed my ferry back, so I got back a day late. And so I was a day late enrolling. Everyone else had enrolled, apart from one boy that was lurking in the corridors of Ottigan Polytechnic with tight, black, curly hair. And that was Tim. Yeah. So weirdly, I have no idea why he was late, because he's just one of them people that's always late. And we just met and that was that. And then we met and then I had to go into the principal's office and so did he. And then we both went for a coffee and I said, oh, I'm not staying here for Long because I've applied to be a. I've applied for a job to go on the tube music program. Cause in the back pages of the NME they were. Paula Yates had got pregnant.
- [35:27]
B
Yeah.
- [35:28]
A
And they were looking for a replacement and so I sent off for the job and I got shortlisted. So I've been up to Newcastle for an interview, Tin Tease Television and I got shortlisted down to the last six and I thought that's it, I'm not staying at art school, I'm going off to. Because I never wanted to be an artist. I mean there was no future in that. I was going to go into music in some way. Yeah. So I was going to be a TV presenter and so I didn't give a shit about being at art school. I was going off and then I didn't get the job. Someone called Felix as a little boy got the job.
- [36:05]
B
Oh, Felix.
- [36:05]
A
And they were filling in for Paula Yates. Anyway, it was interesting, it was an interesting journey and then I had to return back to art school with my tail between my legs and go, oh, that's it now for the next three years. So yeah, so I started off as a painter in art school but in the holidays I'd gone to Womad festival to see Susie and the Banshees and took some really strong drugs. I took a microdot which is much stronger than LSD and it blew my brains out. And I saw every molecule in the atmosphere and I went on this incredible 14 hour trip where the ground swallowed me up and snakes were crawling up my legs. My shoelaces turned into snakes and they were wrapping around my legs and I saw a tree and it had apples in it and every apple was Michael Jackson throughout his entire, every single incarnation of Michael Jackson throughout his career. And they were all talking to me and yeah, I went on this trip and, and when I went back to art school I said I don't want to paint anyone and make sculpture. So I saw everything three dimensionally. That was the thing that did it. Taking acid.
- [37:32]
B
Are you serious?
- [37:33]
A
Yeah. So I started making sculpture. So I said I want to move down to the sculpture department. And so they, they, so at this point they'd already allocated everybody their, their, their spaces. You know, like you get a little bit, a little space with a curtain on it, don't you? A little partitioned painting studio. And they took me down to the sculpture room and there was no room because like they'd already filled up the spaces. And so apart from this giant room with a door on it that was like the size of this, maybe a bit bigger than that. And they said, well, we've got this space here and it's got a door with a lock on it. I said, that'll do. So I had this. A studio to myself and it was huge and I could lock the door and avoid all the tutorials. So when I knew anyone was coming round, I just locked the door, switch off the music and pretend I wasn't in. So I didn't have any tutorials. Yeah. Oh, wow. And also Tim himself also followed me down into the sculpture school. He was a painter as well. So he came down straight after me and they said, well, there really isn't any space left. So he had a curtain under the stairs. So they put him under the stairs and I got a whole fucking room to myself with a door that locked and he was under the stairs. And I always remember that he used to buy fish from the fishmongers and then he was really into casting things. His father was an artist and he used to cast things, so he knew how to do it all. So he used to cast the fish and then take the fish home and eat it for dinner, which I thought was disgusting. But we got into working with found objects pretty much immediately, because when you were at art school, they had an art cupboard of materials, so you'd go in and then there were, like, sheets of steel and lumps of clay and you'd go in and you have to sign your little thingy and you'd get your allocated material allocation, if you like. And I just thought, I don't want to do what everyone else is doing, getting the same bloody chunk of metal out and welding it together or lump of clay. And so Tim and I just went out and got shopping trolleys and just used to go around the streets of Nottingham and collect trash and bring it back to the sculpture school and weld it all together. Because we learned how to weld and braze and, you know, it's a great education. I learned how to use all the power tools. You know, you go on the welding course and you'd do all that. And so we just used to bring back. I was very much into Americana and custom cars, customization and stuff. I don't know if it was anything to do with the acid trip, but I just used to. I was mad about custom cars and I never used to go to art galleries. I used to go to custom car rallies and see, like, cars that have been, like, fucked up, you know, and they got neon lights underneath them and they'd been pumped up and they're, you know, they were like. And they'd drive them and then they drop, you know, and they do these show. Put on shows and like, they'd have all these pneumatics in them and the cars would do this and that. Almost like they'd break dance.
- [40:45]
B
Yeah.
- [40:45]
A
You know, and we'd go to Santa Pod and I just got. And they'd chrome the engine. I was obsessed by that. So I used to collect a lot of. Yeah, chrome, like exhaust pipes and stuff, and then weld them onto domestic appliances. Like, I used to try and track down scrap yards that had old 50s and 60s fridges and cookers and then customize them with exhaust pipes and make these, like, amazing fuck off things. Yeah, I used to do flashing lights and lots of chrome. And Tim was very much into the work of Jean. He used to have got. Taken the complete opposite to me. He got taken around art galleries by his artist parents. And so he was very much influenced by the work of Jean Tingly. And so he got into making things that moved. Kinetic sculpture, if you like, sort of. His degree show was very much about kinetics and taxidermy. He'd make things fly, crows fly and things. And I would make. I was very much into flashing lights and welding junk together and I was into customization. So we had these two quite incredible degree shows. Yeah. And then when we left, when it came to what we can do next, somebody came that was starting out like an artist studios up in Bradford in Yorkshire, and said, give you both a free studio. So it was like, fantastic. We kind of really had to survive, so we had to get jobs building stuff for stage sets, pop videos and whatever like that. We got quite good at it. But Tim's brother was down in London, he's also an artist and he was at the Royal Academy. And he was like what he called a proper artist. Not like us who were messing around artists, you know, he was very sure about that. You know, he was a proper artist. And he just sent word up and said, someone's put a shark in a tank and called it art. And we were like, what? Let's go down and see it. So we traveled down from Bradford to London to the Saatchi Gallery on Boundary Road. I think it was in Swiss Cottage, that one. And I just had my mind blown because I'd never been into a white space with just one object in. Was just the walls were white, the floor was white and there was nothing on the walls. And it was just like this shark in a tank. And I remember it being one of those defining moments where it just, like, was that shock to the system. It scared the shit out of me. Not the possibility of coming face to face with something that could eat me, but more, the boundaries of art were down and anything could be art. There was like, what you're doing painting bloody pictures and putting them on the wall. It was like there was endless possibilities of what art could be then. Cause this conceptual art thing had come in to the picture of something that I'd never been aware of. Conceptual art. Didn't know what it was. I was afraid of it. And I got introduced to conceptual art and it was this whole YBA movement thing that was happening in London. And I just thought, what the fuck are we doing messing around in the North? And I'd never even thought about being a part of this thing. It scared me enough to go, I need to go down and see what's going on. So we moved 200 miles from Bradford down to London. Didn't know anyone down there. Tim had two friends, so we used to. One was in Clapham, one was in Notting Hill Gate. And we slept on their floor until we found ourself a flat. And cleverly, I realized that if we'd applied to go to art school to do an ma, we'd get a free studio and maybe some subsidized living space. So previous to that, I said to Tim, look, we're not going to survive in London. We ain't got two pennies to rub together. Let's apply to go to do an ma. And so we applied separately, we made separate bodies of work and Tim got an. I didn't get an interview. He did. He got an interview at the Royal College of Art and they gave him a place at doing sculpture at the Royal College of Art. And so for me, I didn't care. I just thought, brilliant. Got a free studio now in central London and subsidized accommodation. So we found a flat that was subsidised in a block of flats above Clapham south tube station. Tiny thing. And we gave up the bedroom and lived in one room and made the bedroom into a studio, a tiny studio. And then Tim, yeah, he enrolled at sculpture schools in Battersea. And I just thought, well, I'm not going to sit at home all day, so give me a card. You can tap on the door to get in. And I just invited myself up to Kensington Gore Royal College of Art while he was in Battersea. And I just used. I used the pass. And then I just went in, really, and just Started wandering around the art departments using all the facilities.
- [46:04]
B
You start working there?
- [46:05]
A
Yeah, for two years.
- [46:07]
B
And did anyone question you on that?
- [46:09]
A
No, not really. I got a pass and it wasn't until. And I even got a job in the art shop as well selling art materials. And I used to print T shirts in the printing department, sell them in the art shop. And a few people got wind of it, even got invited onto a school trip from the printmaking department to go to New York and said, tim, do you want to come with me? Having been invited to go to New York with the printmaking department. And it wasn't until graduation day at the Royal Albert Hall, Tim turned up in a cap and gown and I didn't. And they were like, oh, you're being really radical, you're not graduating. And I was like, well, I'm actually not a student. It wasn't until graduation day two years later that they cottoned on that I wasn't actually meant to be there.
- [46:56]
B
Good for you. That's fantastic. So I'm going to fast forward sue to back to the home, but to a very well known house that you and Tim created together called the Dirty House with the architect David Adjay in Shoreditch. And people will know this building because it's a very prominent, well known building on Chance street and you had it all painted black and it's got mirrored flush windows on it. It's an incredible building and it's been there a long, long time. Now just tell me about that place, the genesis of it and what it was like to live there initially.
- [47:37]
A
First of all, it's not painted black, so it's a very dark brown.
- [47:41]
B
Right.
- [47:42]
A
Ghanaian brown.
- [47:43]
B
Okay.
- [47:44]
A
David wanted to paint it yellow like sand.
- [47:48]
B
Yeah.
- [47:48]
A
And I was like, I'm not going to live in a bloody yellow house, mate. So he said, well, we'll paint it this. It was like Gucci brown.
- [47:56]
B
Yeah. But very black brown though.
- [47:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that all the copycat houses in all the copycat buildings in Shored is black. Yeah, get it. It was actually a really, really dark shade of brown.
- [48:06]
B
Yeah.
- [48:06]
A
How did that come about? Well, fast forward a few years. You know, we moved to London and then we started working together and we hit the right moment, if you like, where we were showing our work and we got picked up by galleries and we became very successful and we earned a lot of money very quickly and I'd never had any money before. I was terrified. We started making these intricate abstract sculptures that when you shone a light on it, they made Self portraits of me and Tim.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah. Just to put some color on that. People that don't know. They're absolutely ingenious, those. But they're basically found objects, aren't they, that you assemble together. And then when you shine a light on them, they project onto the wall an incredibly accurate depiction of. Usually of you and Tim, or whatever it was.
- [48:57]
A
Well, mainly of me and Tim. Yeah. I mean, collectors at the time started wanting us to do their portraits Andy Warhol style. And we refused to do anyone's portrait other than. The only other person we did was Isabella Blow.
- [49:09]
B
Oh, did you?
- [49:10]
A
Yeah. And that ended up in the National Portrait Gallery.
- [49:12]
B
Oh, really?
- [49:13]
A
So the only other portrait. And we got asked by a lot of famous people and we were like, I can't go down that Andy Warhol. Yeah. We could have still been doing them. We would have made loads more money, probably. But we refused to do it. Yeah. So the first portrait we made of each other were made up of the things that. The stuff that you throw into a drawer. A broken pair of sunglasses or a. Or a badge that's lost its pin and you just can't throw them away. So we both had these like drawers or boxes full of shit. And so we just glued them together. So I'm made up of all the bits that were. The first one was made up of me and the other one was made up of Tim's things. And we were really embarrassed by this thing. Cause we didn't even know if it was art.
- [49:56]
B
Yeah.
- [49:57]
A
So we were very shy of showing it. And before we had a gallery, we had a space on Rivington street in Shoreditch, which was an old. The old Stirling Ackroyd office, actually. And we lived on the top floor and we had an office in the middle and a studio on the basement. So we did our very first show in that building. And we were making light sculptures with flashing lights, which were very popular. And so we did a giant love heart with a dagger running through it on the ground floor. An electric fountain of. Made of lights that flowed like water on the middle floor. And then on the top floor we put this thing we glued together. When you shone a light on it, it made a shadow. And we were a bit embarrassed by it cause we didn't know quite what it was. And it was. If you walked up to it, it looked like a pile of rubbish. But when you crossed, there was a projector on the floor that had a sensor on it. So when you walked in front of it, the light came on. You could actually hear People gasp like that when they saw that the projection made these portraits on the wall. And that was the Charles Saatchi moment. Charles Saatchi turned up. It was to our studio, really, because in them days, people put shows on in derelict warehouses. And we just happened to have a nice little shop, if you like, on Rivington Street. And nobody came to Shoreditch in them days. And a taxi pulled up with the engine's still running. It's like, don't go, because I'll never get a taxi back. And it was Charles Sartre walks in with his little daughter Phoebe. And we hid behind the wall. We never even saw. We never spoke to him. And there was a number to ring on the invite. And so when the taxi left, he rang the number and he bought two pieces. And so that was the Saatchi moment. But anyway, so fast forward. We met Stuart Shave and started working with him when we formed the gallery Modern Art together. We started making a ton of money. I didn't know what to do with it. I said, stuart, hold onto that money and just pay us 60 quid a week, because that's how much the dole was at the time we were signing on, before we were making any money. And so I said, just keep paying us 60 quid a week. I know how to. I know what to do with 60 quid a week. I don't know what to do with all these other hundreds of thousands of pounds that were. Until I saw a building on our way to Modern Art one day, and it was for sale, and it was like a derelict. A box. It was a square box, didn't have a pointy roof, it was a flat box and I just loved it. And I think they wanted £500,000 for it. And I had in the bank a quarter of a million. And I asked this older man that I used to see at art openings, I said, how'd you get a mortgage? I had no idea. And he said, normally you put a 10% deposit down and the bank will give you the rest of the. I said, well, I've got a 50% deposit. And so I went to my bank, Lloyds, at the time High street bank, and I said, I've got this building, I want to buy it. I've got half the money. And they did. The old computer says no. Tapped it in. I was like, what are you talking about? I was told if I had 10%, you'd give me the rest. But I didn't have any accounts and I couldn't just. It was all wrong. But I wanted to buy this building. And so then I went to someone that was rich. No, I went to my dad first and I said, dad, can you lend me some money? My dad said, if I sold my house, I wouldn't have enough money. I said, I want to give you the money, but if I remortgage my house, it wouldn't be enough. And so the richest person I knew was Detmar Blow, who was back in modern art at the time. And I said, detmore, can you lend me some money? And he couldn't. And because he got his money tied up. And so he. His sister. His sister was married to a doctor who happened to have the amount of money that I needed. And so I loaned it off him to buy the. So we loaned the rest of the money to put with our money. And the minute you buy a property, everything changes. Then all the banks want to know you. Do you know what I mean? Then we got a mortgage because I owned a property and it was that building.
- [54:04]
B
So how did the house change things for you in terms of your work? I mean, did the house inspire the work, do you think?
- [54:12]
A
Well, it just. I always lived in fear of being kicked out.
- [54:15]
B
Yeah.
- [54:16]
A
Of rents going up or landlords, you know, And I just thought, well, just for security, I just wanted to buy my own property.
- [54:25]
B
Yeah.
- [54:26]
A
And there was not a lot of people doing that at the time, but I knew that once I got my own building and it had to. My first thought was, I want the right space to work in. Living was secondary to that. There was no living space. We'd met David Adjaye. He was a student at the Royal College of Art. And we always used to joke. And he went. He was in partnership with Will Russell. So it was Ajay and Russell. I think they were working together. And I used to joke to David that if we ever have enough money, I'd get you to do a building for us. We used to joke about it, you know, and then of course, it came true. So he's the first person I turned to when I bought this. Before I bought the property, it had pillars holding up the next floor. I thought, I can't work in this building that's got pillars. Can you get rid of them? I bought him round. I said, can you get rid of them pillars? And he says, oh, yeah, we'll just gut the building and we'll pin it from the four corners and we'll get rid of the pillars. And I said, great, I'll buy the building. That was that. It was David. I Took David around, said that was that, and we do the job. We did that project for like 300 grand in nine months. Tim and I were still working in the building because we were working on a big show at Gagosian, for Gagosian la. And we were using the studio. It was derelict, but it was a massive fuck off space. And we were building our work in this derelict building. And we'd bought it, but then we had to raise the money to do it up. So literally the building was being done up. As we were selling work, we were raising a bit more money to do the kitchen, a bit more money to do the bathroom. So we were just bankrolling it ourselves on the back of that show. There's not much to it, really. I mean, David, it's radical. It looks completely radical. We had nowhere to live, so we had to apply for planning permission to build the penthouse on the top. So we had this fuck off penthouse, which was the size of the building. It was huge.
- [56:20]
B
Yeah, it's great. The roof is lifted like a lid almost. That's coming off the top.
- [56:24]
A
Yeah. And it was very much like living in Los Angeles. Although I'd never lived in Los Angeles. That's what it felt like. Cause all we could see was blue sky. Because Shoreditch was not built up like it is now. You looked off that balcony and you could see above what, you know, beyond what is now Shoreditch High street overground and all those buildings that have been built since.
- [56:45]
B
Did you have a Richard woods floor up there?
- [56:46]
A
Yeah. So woods was an artist working with Stuart at the time. And so we. I think we did a deal with him to do the floor. So it was a custom made Richard woods floor. Yeah. So, you know, once you got a bit of money, I bought a Gary Hume rug. Yeah, he just did it. We did it gradually. It was a massive empty space. It was all about the studio. The living space was very bare to start with. And then we bought furniture as we needed it.
- [57:17]
B
How many years were you there for?
- [57:19]
A
We moved in 2001 and I moved out in 2018. So I was there for just about 17 years ago. Okay.
- [57:25]
B
Wow. That's a long time. So that saw a lot, that house. And then, you know, latterly the two of you separated.
- [57:32]
A
Yeah. If I could have kept that house and I could have airlifted it up, I could have picked it up and put it somewhere else. I think Shoreditch just became unbearable to live in. Did it just became. And it was our fault. I mean, really, you know, because of us because of artists and because of that landmark building. And they then built Shoreditch House, and then they built the overground. And then it just became this popular area. It was derelict. It was a derelict part of London. Shoreditch was. No one wanted to go there. Even our friends didn't want to come and visit us. They thought they'd come out and their wheels would be missing. The car would be propped up on bricks, literally. Really? Yeah.
- [58:11]
B
So you've described the breakdown of your marriage. Almost like a death, is what you said. I mean, just tell me about that. What was that period like for just
- [58:21]
A
living and working together for. So, I mean, we met when we. On the first day of art school and we were inseparable. I mean, we spent very little time apart. We ended up working together. We lived together. And it was the living and the. And we were like. It's not that we finished each other's sentences, but we had such an intuition about working together, whereas we really didn't. We trusted each other so much. And then it just became that thing where, you know, the rock and roll lifestyle, I think, got in the way. And there was a lot of temptations, especially in Shoreditch at the time. We became like rock stars. You know, rock stars have a lot of groupies.
- [58:59]
B
You had a lot of groupies, did you?
- [59:00]
A
So art became massive.
- [59:02]
B
Yeah.
- [59:02]
A
Artists became the new rock stars. You know, hanging out in the Groucho Club, being invited to all the parties, and it literally. Yeah, it just became. We became like rock stars, I think. And it. Yeah, it just. It took its toll on the both of us. It had a strain on the relationship. Yeah. It just became really traumatic. Couldn't live with it. I remember throwing everything of his off the balcony.
- [59:34]
B
So you've talked about coming out of that.
- [59:39]
A
It was a death. Yeah. And I mourned that death. It was because he was like another limb. It was like losing a limb, really. And it was more traumatic than losing both my parents because I'd been with him longer than I'd been with my parents. You know, I'd left home when I was probably 19 and met him and did all my growing up together. And I'd been with him for 20 something years, 25 years, maybe. I think. So, yeah. I'd live with him longer than I'd lived with my parents. Yeah. So it was. It was a very hard thing to break through to the other side.
- [60:15]
B
Yeah. So you left and where did you go?
- [60:21]
A
I had a friend that lived in this. He's a chef called Mark Hicks. And he used to live in this posh bit of London called de Beauvoir that I'd never heard of. And so I used to go and visit, we used to go and visit him on Christmas Day often. He lived in this proper house with a garden and I'd never seen anything like it and it was just, it was all comfortable. I'd lived in warehouses, caravans, flats and stuff, you know, I hadn't really lived in a proper house. And yeah, I went to visit him in this house. It had three stories and a garden and we used to go around that Christmas Day and I just. And it just felt like, it felt like going to your parents house or something. And I said to him, if you ever sell this, let me know, I'll buy it off ya. And he lived with my best friend Claire, who's still my best friend. They were together, they split up. And then he said, he rang me up, he honored it and he said, look, I'm going to sell this, I'm going to sell the house. I'll give you first refusal. So I went and I looked at it. When it came to it, I just couldn't, I just couldn't buy it because it was just normal. All the reasons I thought I wanted it because it was normal. I just couldn't do it in the end. But I liked this area. And cycling back to Shoreditch, I came across a derelict version of his house. In fact two versions of his house back to back. And it had buddleia growing out of it and it was derelict. The roof had fell in, the boundary wall had collapsed and it was now being propped up with. It was being protected with corrugated iron and it had chains on it. It said keep Out. It looked like the haunted house where the Adams family would live. I just thought, what the fuck's this? And it said Hackney Council on it. And I literally on my pushbike rang the number. Hello, I'm standing outside 121 Mortimer Road. It says, Keep Out. Can you tell me about this house? And the blokes sort of laughed down the phone and said, it wasn't for sale, it was just derelict, like unloved, no one wanted it. And the blokes said, Google Mole man of Hackney. And I'd never heard of the Mole man of Hackney. And so I went back and I googled the Mole man of Hackney. And it opened up this whole literally can of worms. And I thought, now there's a project.
- [62:49]
B
Well, for the people that don't know about the Mole man of Hackney, Tell us about it.
- [62:54]
A
Well, it turns out that there's this crazy guy. He was dead by the time I'd discovered him. And the house was sitting empty. So he was an Irish guy, William Little. And he'd come over from Ireland cause he'd inherited his family home, which was two Victorian houses back to back. One on Stamford Road, one on Mortimer Road. And he'd had the house for 40 years. And in that 40 years, he'd entertained himself by doing his own home improvements without planning permission. But I guess if it's home improvements inside the home, who cares? But word had got out that he'd actually tunneled and dug rooms underneath the. And then couldn't help himself but go slightly out of the boundary. And so there was rumors because people didn't quite know what he was doing. There was rumors that he had gone. That you had tunneled under the road and was gonna pop up. And people were terrified it was gonna pop up in their back garden. He told somebody he was digging his way to Barclays bank at Dalston Junction. So he didn't help himself much by telling people rumors and what. The council rerouted the number 76 bus that used to come down Stanford Road from Kingsland Road onto Englefield. And they rerouted it because they were terrified that people standing outside Stamford Road waiting for the bus was going to suddenly disappear into a sinkhole. So I think the rumors got worse of what was actually happening. That he was tunneling under the road. I don't know how much of this is true, but I'm thank God that the number 76 got rerouted because that would have been quite annoying running past my house every day.
- [64:45]
B
True.
- [64:46]
A
And the neighbors were so concerned for the safety of the house that the council had to come up. The council came along and evicted him and put him into social housing where he started tunneling again. I think he knocked a wall down. It wasn't even his house. They evicted him. And then they turned up with a concrete mixer, put the hose through the letterbox and then pressed Play and then filled up the whole of the. Whatever the garden and the tunnels, whatever tunnels they were with the aerated concrete. And they didn't remove anything. And so by the time I got my hands on the building, the garden was full of concrete. It had half a door sticking out of it. It had AGI props, it had shopping trolleys. It was almost like Pompeii, where things had been frozen in time and they were surrounded by concrete. So I just found this building and I just became obsessed by it. I just thought, yeah, it's a lovely area de Beauvoir. But I couldn't live in the normal, you know, twee houses that they'd had. I needed to get my hands on this.
- [65:53]
B
Excuse the quick interruption, but a reminder that you can watch my house tour with sue on Patreon. She shows me the layers of concrete that are still there from the Mole Man's underground tunnels. She talks me through her creative process in her painting studio and she reveals some very surprising details in her upstairs bathroom. Head to patreon.com homingwithmat so it was
- [66:20]
A
in the hands of probate when I found it. And I tracked down the. They were called Air Hunters. What was people who had it. He was a probate person, but also they had a TV program called the Air Hunters. They're trying to track down the heirs. I see if he had any. I don't think he had any children, but he certainly. I've had people on Instagram message me and say, I am William Little's nephew or something, people from Ireland. I went to the probate people and I said, you know, I've seen this derelict house. I don't think they took me seriously. You know, they just didn't know who I was and what I could achieve and what I'd done with dirty house. And I had the money to buy it and I offered them some money, I offered them half a million pounds and they just ignored me. And so I kind of put it to the back of my mind and just, you know, carried on with life. Carried on with my divorce. Actually, I think it's pre divorce, but maybe we'd separated at the time, but carried on with my life, really. And then a friend of mine said, sent me an article. She said, yeah, how has she been going on about. Popped up in auction. Ah, it's about a year later and. And so I went back into the. Down the rabbit hole and yeah, went to the auction and I. I was terrified of bidding on it because I thought, I'm not going to be able to stop. Stop myself. I worked out how much my limit was. I worked out it's two house. I knew how much one house in de Beauvoir was worth and I'm buying two. But I also knew what state it was in and how much money I was probably gonna have to spend doing it up. So I had a limit. And I asked my art dealer at the time who was Harry Blaine, who's used to sitting in auctions and bidding on Picassos. I said, will you Bid on this house for me. I'll come with you. And he was in a suit and. And he was taken seriously, a man in a suit. So I wrote on the catalog what my limit was. And so, unfortunately, we were in a bidding battle with someone else. Don't know who it was, but. Yeah, but it went up and it just went under my limit. And we got it. And when we walked out, he got hounded by the press, not me. I nipped off through the back door down the pub. I see it at the pub on the corner. They're all saying to him, what you gonna do with the. You've got, you know, like this, with this press and that. And it was quite funny.
- [68:40]
B
That's hilarious.
- [68:41]
A
What are you going to do with it? Well, because he ain't got a clue what to say. No comment.
- [68:47]
B
Well, on the subject of what are you going to do with it? I mean, it's amazing what you have done with it because you, Rather than just get rid of everything that the mole man was about, you've. You've sort of preserved parts of it. You know, you showed me around and, and we'll. We'll make that tour available to people on Patreon. But it's fascinating because you can see it's like. It's very archaeological, isn't it? You got the layers of history. You can still see bits of the concrete, random things sticking out of here.
- [69:11]
A
Yeah. I was very adamant that I wanted to keep the four walls with all their nooks with all their holes and all their pieces of steel propping out of it. Nails in the wall, Mole man marks, the marks of history, if you like. There was lots of graffiti and whatever. I was very adamant. I wanted to keep the windows as were. I mean, my builder said to me, well, take it down brick by brick and rebuild it and it'll be cheaper. And I was like, no, what's the point of that? I wanted to preserve the history for future generations, for eccentricity reasons, if you like. From one eccentric to another. It took an eccentric woman to buy this property and to see the beauty in it and to preserve it. Because now I get dads coming by on push bikes with their kids, going, telling them about the mole man and telling them about the story and the house, and that wouldn't exist if a property developer would have got their hands on it, they just would have demolished it and then they would have built it to the edges of the boundary and sold it off for as much money as they could. I think it's important to preserve these little moments of history, you know, for future generations, really.
- [70:30]
B
You've made an incredible place here and I think what's amazing about it is that it supports every aspect of your life. You know, we're in your studio here, but it's also a home for you and your five year old son. Spider. How has being a mom changed things for you? Because you were telling me earlier you were 52 years old when you gave birth, which is miraculous. Well, just tell me a little bit about that.
- [70:54]
A
I think it goes on. I think, you know, women do have. Women are having babies later in life. I think they're reversing that cliche where it's not just left for men. I mean, men can reproduce it ad infinitum until their 80s if they're lucky enough, but women are told that they can't. We have a biological clock, but technology moves on and we're able to hopefully define the rules. It's been a. It's been a prerequisite of my life, really, to try and defy the rules. Yeah. So it's just another one to add to the list, I think, of an achievement, really.
- [71:30]
B
So presumably you did ivf, did you? Because you're a single mom, right?
- [71:34]
A
Yeah, but I know the father. Yeah, the father was an ex boyfriend of mine.
- [71:38]
B
Okay.
- [71:39]
A
And he agreed to father the child. So I know who the father is. Good looking lad.
- [71:45]
B
Nicely done.
- [71:47]
A
I'm still in touch with him and his mother. Yeah. So it was very important for me to not, you know, it's not picked out of a catalogue, if you like. Yeah, it's definitely a Webster child, but
- [72:03]
B
it's brave to undertake that on your own. Were you adamant that you wanted to be a mum?
- [72:06]
A
I mean, you know, I've had a. I mean, I'm financially successful, I can afford to do it. I had a terrible miscarriage with Tim. We, I mean, you know, we met at art school, we had a rock. We fell into this rock and roll career. We didn't talk about having a family. It's not until we later in life that that sort of urge came over me and I became pregnant in my 40s with Tim. And it was towards the end of our relationship and I thought, oh, this is it, this is gonna happen, you know, And I was midterm when I lost the child. I lost the. You know, I had to give birth to a baby that died inside of me from some. It wasn't meant to be and I. It was. It sent me down and it spiraled me off again into A black hole. And, you know, I was splitting up with Tim at the time, and I just thought. I had a word with myself and I thought, I'm not going to go to that dark place again. So the only way that I can save my life, and it was really, I had to save my life, was in order to then make a mission to reverse what had happened to me and to actually have a child, to give birth to a child. And so it became a project, it became a mission, and I had to do it in order to save myself. I knew that from what I was, you know, from the black hole that I was capable of getting into before. I thought, I'm going down that hole again. I can't let it happen to me twice. So, yeah, it became a thing and it saved my life and it's changed my life. I mean, I'm still making art. I've got plenty of ammunition for my art now, and you'll see it in my new work. You know, it's all about, you know, defying the rules again. Yes. And I've. I've made that into my paintings. You know, here I am, a defiant woman in her 50s who's able to give birth.
- [74:08]
B
Yeah, but we're surrounded by those portraits here. They are really super powerful. And you had saying to me earlier that there's one of them that you painted 10 times.
- [74:17]
A
I'm on the 10th version.
- [74:18]
B
Yeah, you're on the 10th version. And it's a picture of you pregnant, with your leather jacket on, with your Susie and the banshees badges and so on.
- [74:27]
A
Yeah.
- [74:30]
B
Why that image? Why paint that one?
- [74:34]
A
It should be in the National Portrait Gallery and it should sit along portraits of presidents. I think, because it is. Maybe they don't realize it yet, how important this image is of a woman who is. Yeah, defiantly pregnant, in her 50s, and that it's possible to. You know, I mean, I had a career, I. You get to a certain age in your 30s, where you've got to start, you know, the time bomb is ticking away inside of you. And I just thought it wasn't going to be possible. And it is, and it is. It totally is. And as technology moves so fast these days, women will be able to have. If the womb is still capable, women will still be able to have children into the 60s, I say. I would say so. It's a defining moment in time, not just for myself, but just for women in general. I think there's a message out there to say that, yes, it is possible to have a career and still think about having a child if that urge doesn't reach you until later in life, where the urge didn't hit me until later in life. I want a baby. I'm going to do something about it. Do you know what I mean? I ain't gonna let the rules stop me.
- [75:49]
B
Yeah.
- [75:52]
A
You know, and on top of that, I'm wearing the jacket that takes me back to the youth of this person that had overcome, you know, a difficult adolescent and found a savior, if you like, in the music of Susie the Banshees and in the role model of its lead singer, Susie Sue. You know, she helped me through a difficult adolescence. And I've kind of revisited that as a. As an adult to help me get through another difficult period of my life, but this time as a muse to
- [76:26]
B
my work, you know, so interesting. The one just behind me here with the box and gloves on. So you with boxing gloves on. Are you a boxer then?
- [76:36]
A
Yeah, so I. Yeah. In my. Down in Shoreditch there's a great gym, Paragon Gym, run by two brothers that are kickboxing champions. And so I had that thing where I always. I had these friends who said, come on, let's go and learn how to kickbox. And my friend sort of left town and moved out of London. And I just thought, you know what? I'm going to go around. I'm going to go to that gym. You know, I think exercise is a great form of therapy. I swim a lot and you know, just having that thing. I think repetition helps the brain as well. It's like a mantra. So boxing is quite a repetitive. Especially in training. I used to be very good on the speedball. I used to drive everyone insane at the gym. But, yeah, I joined the gym. And for 12 years, right up until Covid and Spider was born, I boxed at my gym. I learned to box and kickbox. So I'm a brand belt. I just missed out on my black belt. I can still go back, I guess, but I mean, I guess having the chance. I take Spider there now. Spider's really good. Cause he's little and he can jump up and give me a left hook. Yeah, an uppercut.
- [77:46]
B
So is there anything else apart from the boxing and the swimming that you do overtly, you know, to kind of keep your head in the right spot?
- [77:53]
A
Well, I have a place in the country that absolutely is worth its weight in gold. Just getting in a car and leaving London behind when it gets all too much. Tim was from Stroud. I'd never been to. That is like old England. In a way, it's the rolling hills. It's beautiful landscape. I'd never seen anything like it. I guess I was born and brought up in Leicester and moved to Nottingham and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I'd never been to such a beautiful place. And when we had enough money, we bought a small holding in Stroud. And during the divorce, I kept it. Yeah, Just going there to clear my head. Walking through the woods, letting the wind. It's on a point where it's really high up, where the weather, when it builds up and it comes across the Atlantic from America and it gets sucked up the Bristol Channel, and the highest point it hits is the Slide Valley up there. So you get the really strong winds that ripple through. I've got. Tim and I used to own 40 acres of woodland right next door. And you could hear it rippling through the trees like the Mexican wave. And, you know, I walk up there in a strong wind. The wind that would. That you lean into.
- [79:13]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [79:14]
A
It's that. That kind of wind and it just blows the cobwebs out.
- [79:17]
B
Yeah. So that does it.
- [79:19]
A
It's a. Yeah, it's been worth its weight in gold. So I'm hoping to build a studio down there so I could spend more time down there.
- [79:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. Be amazing. Well, let's see. My last question for you is one that I usually ask. This building is not only an iconic piece of architecture, it's also your home, your family home. How do you put your finger on what this place means to you in your life? What does it represent to you? How important is it to you?
- [79:55]
A
Well, there's nothing like designing your own space. I just couldn't live in someone else's footprint, you know, so I'm lucky enough to have done it more than once, where I just design the. It's like I design the life I want to live and I'm designing the space that I want to live in. I just couldn't do it any other way.
- [80:17]
B
Well, I'm really interested in what you told me about your upbringing and your father building a place, but also your family heritage in general. It's really clear where that impulse comes from.
- [80:27]
A
Yeah.
- [80:29]
B
So I can. It's really helped me make sense of a lot of it.
- [80:32]
A
Now, did you lay awake at night wondering, yeah, yeah, you know me, I wonder why? Where's it come from?
- [80:42]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's been a total joy. So I've. As you know, I'm a massive admirer of what you do, not only as an artist, but also you know, not to blow too much smoke up your ass, but you have. You've created two, I think, really important buildings and I think. I really hope that they will both be here forever. You know, I think that their moments in time. That place in Shoreditch, as you said, it sort of defined the whole area.
- [81:13]
A
Yes.
- [81:14]
B
And I think this Mole House, I think, again, it goes a bit further than just being a house. I think it represents something. And I love this idea that you said that it represents a sort of eccentricity, a kind of outside energy somehow, and that you see yourself a bit in him. So, yeah. Thank you so much.
- [81:34]
A
I'm a hoarder. Oh, my God. Yeah. Like him. Yeah.
- [81:37]
B
Yeah.
- [81:38]
A
But, yeah, it's like. Yeah. I can't throw anything away. I've now made it into art. Well, always.
- [81:46]
B
Thank you, Sue, Sarah. Thanks so much for being here, everyone. And huge thanks to sue as well. I just loved finding out more about her life. I mean, there's a lot of heavy stuff in there, but it's really a story of triumph over adversity, I think. I'm fascinated by the idea that she identified in some way with the Mole man and wanted to carry on his legacy. And the idea of the house as a sort of love letter to eccentricity, I find so interesting. Also, the fact that a place like that can be created by someone who started out in a caravan in Leicester is just so special, I think. So. I'm a huge admirer of Sue's if you're interested in her work. She's got her first exhibition as a solo artist artist currently on. It's on show at first sight in Colchester and it runs until the 10th of May. If you're enjoying the Homing podcast and you want to show your support in some way, the best way to do that is to sign up with us on Patreon, which has really helped. We keep the lights on over here, but the second best way is to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or even just a quick rating. So big thanks in advance to anyone who's able to to help out with that. This episode was produced by Podshop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks, everyone and look forward to talking to you again very soon. Bye for now.