Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor in Spitalfields yesterday. Photograph: 19 Princelet Street
Flapjacks and bananas were the order of the day at 19 Princelet Street in Spitalfields yesterday for the visit of world-renowned artists Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor.
The artists stopped off at the house, home to a museum of immigration and diversity, during their seven mile ‘walk of compassion’ from the Central London to Stratford to raise awareness of the refugee crisis.
The museum’s volunteer staff greeted the artists, who were joined by up to 100 members of the public, with the “symbolic gesture” of bananas, apples, flapjacks and water.
“It was like some modern version of the loaves and the fishes,” said Susie Symes, chair of the 19 Princelet Street, a museum that tells the story of London’s refugees and migrants.
“We brought the food and drink out and the street seemed full. They had some but they were absolutely insistent that we shared it with the whole crowd. That sense of sharing is so much of what this message is.”
Ms Symes described the occasion as a “moving mixture of being very sad and very joyful”.
“Here is a man standing in our street who doesn’t want to be forced into refuge because of who he is and what he does,” said Ms Symes about dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
“And now here he is on our doorstep – that makes us feel very moved and very happy and yet at the same time we’re thinking about 20 million refugees and another 35 million internally displaced people in this world.”
19 Princelet Street is a museum run by volunteers that seeks to connect past stories of refugees and migrants and connect them to those of the present day.
“We’re a place that’s completely founded by refugees,” Ms Symes said. “I think Anish Kapoor saw this as perfect and we saw it as perfect. People came over in little boats in the sea 300 years ago, and people are drowning from little boats today.”
The artists, who both wore blankets across their shoulders to symbolise the needs of refugees, led the solidarity march from the Royal Academy in Central London, where Ai Weiwei is hosting an exhibition, finishing at Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal sculpture in Stratford in East London.
There’s nothing more electric than live music and it feels there’s never been a better time to enjoy it in East London. A couple of weeks ago I sat in a cellar bar packed with people listening to nothing but the sweet sounds of a piano and a double bass picking out tunes like ‘Pitter Patter Panther’ and ‘Lady Be Good’ with just the chinking of glasses being picked up and put down on tables.
It was Basement Tapes night at Kansas Smitty’s, one of the area’s newest jazz hangouts, where each week one member of the self-titled house band invites other musicians in to play music to a ticket-only crowd. That week it was band member Joe Webb on piano and Conor Chaplin on double bass and both were excellent.
It’s ticket-only, presumably, because otherwise there’d be a scrum on the door. Open since May, the venue already has a loyal following of regular customers, with one saying he and his friends got there several hours early to make sure they got a spot.
The Kansas Smitty’s house band regularly play the likes of Ronnie Scott’s, the Vaults and the Vortex. They’re led by Giacomo Smith on clarinet, who hails from upstate New York. The bar is their permanent base in the city, with a film night on Tuesdays, jazz throughout the week and plans to put on more live events as autumn draws in.
The model of bringing in musicians from the wider jazz community to play there means there’s always fresh music coming through and creative collaboration really is at the heart of what they’re trying to promote with the venue.
“The clearest goal we had from the outset was that we had to one day have our own bar,” says Kansas Smitty’s manager Jack Abrahams. “We’ve always felt that there was this whole group of people we’d met along the way and were yet to meet who just needed a home to come together in – we are now in the what-happens-next phase.”
With the Jackdaw jazz café just opening in Clapton, is this something of a ‘golden era’ in terms of the jazz talent in in the city right now?
“Absolutely,” says Abrahams. “As London’s land value goes up the larger venues are proving unsustainable and closing down so lots of smaller ones spring up. So much so that the independent arts, music, drink and food scene in London is bordering on frenzied. Plenty of shows means plenty of musicians which means everyone’s bringing their A-game no matter how small the show.
One thing you’ll notice, is that it’s not a pretentious place. It feels more like a big living room, except with a kickass drinks menu and some of London’s brightest musical talent performing each week.
This wouldn’t be a bar review without mentioning the drinks and here it’s all about the juleps. There’s a beautiful ‘Scarborough Fair’ with bourbon, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, toasted almond, salted heather honey and mint. The Allotment is also good, this time with gin, nettle, elderflower, carrot, coriander seed, apple, pear and mint.
All the alcohols are infused over night with herbs and flavours. Served in crushed ice out of a metal cup, the idea is that as the ice slowly melts different flavours are unlocked – so don’t knock them back to fast. With ingredients ranging from Tonka bean, nutmeg and pimento to cloves and chamomile there’s plenty to try, as well a fridge-full of cool beers and ales as the music heats up.
Great music, great atmosphere and exemplary juleps. Don’t miss out.
Kansas Smitty’s House Band will be playing at the bar on 23 September to celebrate the launch of their debut album.
Opening a sourdough pizza place in Hackney is brave. The borough is home to a growing abundance of restaurants offering just that, including Sodo, Apollo and the seemingly unstoppable London chain Franco Manca. Yes, pizza with a light, thin, slightly sour base and few, but quality, ingredients, is right on trend.
So Sourdough Saloon, based in Lord Morpeth pub in Bow, is up against stiff competition. The pizza kitchen serves up a selection of sourdough pizzas every day for between £7 and £10. They certainly get the basics right. The base is satisfyingly thin and crispy and the taste lingers as a sourdough base should. The tomato sauce is used sparingly – which is all it needs because of its richness in flavour.
Choosing between the 15 options on the menu was tricky. The toppings were carefully matched and not excessive in quantity. Particularly appealing were the Siciliana – with mozzarella, black olives, anchovies, garlic oil and oregano – and the Mamma Mia, a classic combination of mozzarella, parma ham, rocket and shaved parmesan.
But as authentically Italian as the ingredients sounded, they were not of the quality we had hoped – indeed they were even a bit bland. We plumped for the Vegetarian and Sbagliate and the indulgent Morpeth. The grilled aubergine on the Sbagliate – which also came with mozzarella and basil – was so thin you wouldn’t know it was there and it was screaming out for a drizzle of olive oil prior to cooking.
We expected big things from the Morpeth pizza, given its namesake. It’s topped with Buffalo mozzarella, spicy salami, gorgonzola, roasted mixed peppers and rocket. But we detected hardly any gorgonzola, and little flavour beyond the salami, which was mildly spicy and nicely oily.
The experience was let down slightly by the finishing touches. Pizzas are served in cardboard boxes and without cutlery. Also missing were a few light nibbles or starters. Olives or some antipasti would complement the menu well and surely not create too much extra work for a pub kitchen. But the chilli oil and black pepper mill were a nice touch and the staff were a delight.
For pub grub, this is impressive stuff, but it’s no rival to bona fide sourdough restaurants.
An intriguing new play opening at the Yard this month has at its core the central question of what would life would look like “free from the everyday challenges of being a person.”
Brenda, which transfers this month from the HighTide Festival in Suffolk, was inspired by playwright E.V. Crowe’s instinctive feeling about the nature of the self.
“This feeling was so strong, I had to write about it,” Crowe says. “Once I had written a character who could say out loud ‘I’m not a person’ it felt like such a denial of everything we consider natural and true.”
From this radical starting point, the play has been developed alongside acclaimed director Caitlin McLeod through a process of experimentation. The play was built as the rehearsal process unfolded, with everyone in the room contributing to what the production will be.
“It’s a terrifying way to work in some respects,” Crowe admits. “But we think it will make the play more alive and real than other ways of working.”
Crowe honed her playwriting as a member of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme Super Group. Her classmates at the time reading like a who’s who of today’s hot young playwrights: Nick Payne, Anya Reiss, Penelope Skinner.
And although she had completed a MA in playwriting prior to her involvement at the Royal Court, she says it was her experience there that really showed her the possibility of becoming a playwright.
Brenda is clearly at home amongst the challenging and unorthodox work which has come to characterise The Yard theatre, and which has won it such a loyal following across London.
Previously Crowe’s work has been about very distinct subject matter but when talking about Brenda she can’t help but describe it in the abstract. “The play is about the unknown, the unknowable leaking out and disrupting all that we consider real,” she says.
Ultimately Crowe wants the audience to experience the play on a “guttural, instinctive level. So even if there were no words, or you didn’t speak English, you’d ‘feel’ the play anyway.”
Crowe is a big fan of East London and an advocate for young people breaking into the arts. Before becoming a full-time writer she worked for a youth project in Tower Hamlets. “There is so much talent in East London it’s crazy,” she says. “All young people ever need is an opportunity and then the confidence and support to take it.
“I haven’t worked at The Yard before but I love their work and their approach, and that they’re willing to take big risks on artists and ideas.”
Brenda is at The Yard, Unit 2A, Queen’s Yard, White Post Lane, E9 5EN from 22 September – 17 October theyardtheatre.co.uk
Light fantastic: Installation at St John at Hackney church
Hackney’s ‘hidden history’ as a centre for botany and textiles was celebrated on Saturday 12 September with a spectacular light show and app-based trail of the borough’s green-fingered past.
Centering on St John at Hackney church, the Electric Bloom project, led by creative studio SDNA and supported by Hackney Council, saw residents venture in the dark around artworks located at local heritage sites, while listening to audio stories reflecting on Hackney’s past, present and future.
Illustrations of palm leaves designed by Anna Glover formed a permanent light projection on Churchwell Path, while seventeenth century-style intaglio etches by Bryan Poole were animated and projected onto Morning Lane.
Digital art installation inside St John at Hackney
The evening was the culmination of six months of workshops in which residents and artists explored Hackney’s forgotten status as home to London’s textile industry and the largest botanical hothouse in the world.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth century the Loddiges family set up and ran a specialist plant nursery in Hackney just north of St Thomas’s Square off Mare Street.
The nursery introduced into European gardens several species of exotic trees, plants, ferns and shrubs (including rhubarb, the Common Mauve Rhododendron and the Lotus), and the hothouse created a tropical environment where exotic species could thrive in the middle of Hackney Central.
Although the nursery closed in the 1850s, the coming century saw Hackney’s textile roots take hold. By 1900 Hackney was home to hundreds of factories and workshops that employed over 15,000 people.
Jewish New Year food: Short ribs. Photograph: Giulia Mulè
Jewish food doesn’t have to be kosher to be delicious, and you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it. In Hackney we can get the best of all possible worlds, from the austere purity of the supermarkets of Stamford Hill to the rough and tumble of Brick Lane, where authentic bagels with lox and cream cheese or salt beef are consumed by suits, Sikhs, white-van men and bemused tourists.
But to do this we need to try to understand kashrut, the basic ideals and dietary laws of Jewish religion. The laws were given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai and is enshrined in sacred writings and commentaries upon them.
It says what foods are forbidden, and what foods can be eaten and how and when they should be prepared, cooked and served. Meat must be slaughtered to exclude blood and sinews and certain kinds of fat, and never allowed to be in contact with milk and dairy products.
Kashrut resonates on different levels, from common-sense food hygiene in a hot climate to ideals of purity and holiness, for many forbidden items were once destined for holy sacrifices, not profane use. Strict observance creates and reinforces the separateness and otherness of Jewish communities, whilst nurturing the warmth and generosity of family meals and ritual feasts.
We can understand this by reading Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food, an entrancing overview of Jewish food from all over the world, with family reminiscences and recipes, and a wealth of affectionate detail, from Cairo to New York, Baghdad to Bombay.
The food of Ashkenasi Jews reflects that of Eastern Europe, while Sephardi communities, settled all over the world, enjoy a wide range of more exotic dishes from where they now live or used to live. Algerian Jews, many now in exile in France, remain devoted to a cuisine and its rituals based on centuries of life in North Africa.
Special rituals for the celebration of holy days – such as the Jewish New Year, which this year falls on 14–15 September – shape family life, and meals and recipes play an important part in this. The Jewish Museum in Camden Town displays a lot of material showing this aspect of life in London over the centuries.
The Jewish presence in East London goes back a long way, from the Middle Ages when Jews were exploited and persecuted, and eventually expelled, to their acceptance by Oliver Cromwell in the sixteenth century, and an eventual approach to integration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Successful and cultivated Jewish families moved in posh circles, while extending generous charity to the less fortunate in the East End, establishing schools, hospitals and synagogues. This delicate balance was swept dramatically away in the 1880s by the influx of refugees from Eastern Europe fleeing from persecution. While trying to avoid that weasel word ‘swarm’ I find the restrained voice of Dr Jerry Black, author of Jewish London, an Illustrated History who uses ‘avalanche’ to describe the situation.
Just now we are all too familiar with the unsettling mixture of hostility and compassion towards immigrants; to our shame more was done then than now to help and support the 150,000 refugees (from a total of over two million) who fled to London. When the crowded and familiar East End was bursting at the seams, many Jewish people moved northwards towards Stamford Hill, an almost rural area.
A poster advertising flats to be let by the Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company in Stoke Newington in the 1890s perhaps explains the arrival of the by now legendary Egg Stores, still flourishing opposite the entrance to Abney Park Cemetery. This used to be a cavernous, pungent store with seething vats of pickles and gherkins and barrels of herrings, freshly baked bread and many items essential to orthodox Jewish gastronomy.
After a fire a few years ago it reinvented itself and is now a smart ultra kosher supermarket, with every imaginable ingredient sourced, produced and packaged in approved conditions, to meet the need of the local orthodox communities, with tins and packs of most internationally known cuisines. But the Egg Store’s greatest glory is still its herrings, probably the best in town, and its meltingly soft, salty-sweet schmaltz herrings, a treat worth crossing London for.
In Hackney the essentials of Jewish food coexist with related cuisines: a few doors down from the Egg Stores is a fine Polish deli, a Turkish snack bar with Middle Eastern flat bread and salt beef bagels, and the Palestinian Tatreez café with a huge white bulbous bread oven and a small but delicious vegetarian menu. On Stoke Newington Church Street a new café called The Good Egg is due to open on 29 Sept, where Montreal, Tel Aviv and California will add deliciousness to an innovative all-day brunch menu, which includes the ubiquitous Jerusalem Breakfast.
Another unorthodox take on Jewish Middle Eastern food awaits the Hackney citizen who ventures to Spitalfields and finds their way to Artillery Lane, where Yotam Ottolenghi offers a kaleidoscopic menu inspired by Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food. His book Jerusalem is a fusion of Palestinian and Israeli cuisine, speaking of harmony and goodwill in a troubled land. Yotam Ottolenghi could be said to be the Daniel Barenboim of gastronomy; his sensitive use of a huge range of spices and flavourings brings balance and harmony to recipes that are like complex musical scores, performed by a large multi-racial band. Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra does not arrogantly call for peace (a big ask) but suggests ways of listening and understanding that could bring it closer. Enjoying food together, like making music, is a good step forward. We are fortunate that this can be done on so many levels in Hackney.
Some Jewish specialities are universal favourites: potato pancakes and fish balls (gefilte fish) are enjoyed all over the world, both of them ways of making something special and delicious out of frugal ingredients.
Latkes
The proportions are usually one egg to about a pound of potatoes. Seasonings can be grated onion, garlic, chopped parsley, nutmeg, pepper. Grate the peeled potatoes and onion and put them in a sieve or colander and squeeze out the excess moisture. Put in a bowl and add the beaten egg and seasonings and mix well. Have some fat or oil in a heavy frying pan and put spoonfuls of the mixture in, flattening them slightly. Cook until golden then turn over and cook the other side. Eat hot.
Artichokes and Broad Beans
This simple but delicious dish is one of Claudia Roden’s family favourites. Preparing fresh artichoke hearts is one of life’s less agreeable chores, but you can buy them frozen from many Turkish or Middle Eastern stores. The one at the bottom of Ridley Road market usually has them.
1 lb each of artichoke hearts and shelled broad beans
sugar
salt and pepper
lemon juice
chopped fresh mint
olive oil
Put everything in a pan and just cover with water. Simmer gently until done (anything from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the age of the vegetables), topping up with water if necessary, but ending up with a thick sauce. More fresh mint can be added as a garnish.
Bovine inspiration: Farmer Stephen Hook of Hook & Son with ‘queen of the herd’, Ida. Photograph: Emli Bendixen
The Moo Man has many qualities one might not expect from a film about milk.
The documentary, which is being screened this month at Growing Communities’ Moo-vie Night, has a dreamlike quality. It is intimate, funny and quite captivating.
Sussex farmer Stephen Hook, who has a stall at Stoke Newington’s farmers’ market selling ‘raw’ (non-pasturised) milk, tenderly strokes his happy-seeming cows and addresses them by name. Ida is the “queen of the herd”, he says.
But this picture of the dairy industry is increasingly rare. Stephen is solemn as he laments: “Family farms are being lost… that’s what makes me angry, it really does.”
In an economic climate of plummeting prices and rising production costs, more than half of Britain’s dairy farmers have gone out of business since 2002, with 9,724 remaining as of this August – a fall of 0.5 per cent from July. Indeed, British dairy farmers have recently protested in various supermarkets after major milk producers announced more price cuts.
These issues can seem remote for city-dwellers, who are inevitably alienated from the production of much of their food. According to charity Wide Horizons, over 35 per cent of UK children have never visited the countryside, and LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) found in a survey of 2000 British young adults that 40 per cent did not connect milk to an image of a cow.
For urbanites then, The Moo Man may shed light on the reality of life on a small dairy farm, as it documents the farmers’ determined efforts to secure the cows’ welfare and produce an ‘ethical’ product. Going thoroughly against the grain, Hook attempts to save his family farm by rejecting cost-cutting dairies and supermarkets, and instead fostering a familial atmosphere with his team and herd.
The Moo Man will be screened by Growing Communities, the Hackney social enterprise that aims to bring people closer to food sources, as part of their Urban Food Fortnight and Organic September. Viewers will be offered milkshakes and cocktails made with cream and milk from the farm, and there’ll be a Q&A session with Stephen Hook afterwards.
“It’s vital to pay fair prices to support these small family farmers, who are the basis of a more sustainable food system and have really high animal welfare standards,” said Growing Communities market manager Kerry Rankine. “This film shows just what it takes to keep a small farm going.”
Look down the road, ladies and gents, see that shabby block of 100 artists studios? That’s due for demolition. See those luxury flats? That used to be a gay pub with the best parties in town.
Nostalgic East End tours are all the rage these days. But for those left cold by touring gastropubs formerly frequented by murderers like Jack the Ripper, a new outing last month offered the chance to take in similarly sinister sites – the battlegrounds where community campaigns are squaring up to big money.
There is a joke going around that the “green dress lady” adorning the much-mocked hoardings of the Mettle and Poise development encasing the former children’s hospital next to Hackney City Farm might be holding a bagel (a symbol of gritty “East End authenticity”), but it is actually Shoreditch that she is eating.
It is this devouring of community spaces that led Stop the Blocks, a campaign that started the mid-2000s, to dust itself off and unite a clutch of disparate campaigns opposing the “devastating effects” overdevelopment is having on local people.
Flipping the idea of the artist’s open house, its ‘Closed Weekend’ event took participants on a whistle-stop tour of “contested sites” across the borough, highlighting how public space is being “sold off for private profit”.
It might not sound like everyone’s idea of a fun day out but seasoned campaigner and trade unionist Glyn Robbins, who decided to resurrect the campaign in March and acted as the Closed Weekend tour guide insists this is not about “wallowing in the hopelessness of it all”.
Robbins, 51, a life-long East End resident, compares the kind of changes seen in Tower Hamlets and Hackney, epitomised by projects like the controversial Bishopsgate Goodsyard development, to the “aggressive land grab” of the Docklands during the 2000s.
The coalition’s classily-designed map certainly encompasses an alarming number of buildings, pubs and council estates ranging from the Holland Estate, currently under threat of demolition by the housing association that owns it, to artists being kicked out of their studios on Cremer Street and the ‘poor doors’ of One Commercial Street.
Robbins acknowledges the coalition needs to pick its battles. “We have to think strategically. We can’t chase each development, we need to focus development on key issues.”
But while not all the blocks can be stopped, it’s about applying pressure where possible, explains Robbins. “We need to lobby politicians, raise awareness and get local councillors involved.”
Commonality
Stop the Blocks is for many about a sense of commonality. Appearing together on the same map is encouraging to small campaign groups, as it shows the role their battles play in the bigger war.
The Joiners’ Arms pub on Hackney Road was a colourful stop-off for the tour. Charlotte Gerada, who is involved in the Friends of the Joiners’ Arms campaign which won a significant battle in obtaining an Asset of Community Value listing from Tower Hamlets Council, greeted walkers with “queer bunting, LED balloons, multi-coloured confetti and pop music”.
“We invited those on the tour to hear more about the Joiners’, its importance for the queer community and our campaign’s achievements. It was encouraging to meet so many people who were in support of our campaign and our vision for the Joiners’ Arms.”
Another stop-off was the premises of open artist platform and film laboratory no.w.here, which has been based on Bethnal Green Road for the past nine years. Born out of the ashes of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op, this not-for-profit organisation supports artists, runs multiple workshops and discussions, and hosts events and exhibitions.
“We were about to sign a nine-year lease”, explains co-founder Karen Mirza, “But it went off the table. Property investment companies are involved. Now we’re on a three month rolling lease and it’s only a matter of time before we are evicted.”
Spatial justice
It’s a familiar tale. When leases expire there are a few tenants in a position to match the kind of money offered by property investors. Many artists see their displacement as par for the course. Mirza, who has never run a campaign before, says this constitutes “wimping out”.
“Artists should do more. It’s not about self-preservation. We’ve got savings and resources. It’s about rights to live in live-able cities that you have grown up in and had a stake in.”
“The implication of us as artists has got to such a level where we are first, second and third generation gentrifiers. We have to dig deep and ask questions about spatial justice. If you’re not taking the responsibility and not joining the fucking dots you may as well stand with the developers.”
Mirza mentions Cremer Street studios, where artists facing eviction were told to either agree not to object to the development or get kicked out early, as a particularly pertinent example. Developers Regal Homes rubbed salt in the wound by launching a regeneration-themed sculpture competition for the creation of a ‘public artwork’ sculpture to reflect the creative heart of the area.
“Only one artist stood up”, said Mirza. “If we stand on our own we’ll all be picked off. That’s the whole point of Stop the Blocks. What is one more artist studio gone in East London? Who gives a fuck? But what about when it’s an artist studios, a queer pub, a hospital, a pub, two or three housing estates – there’s a difference.”
Walking down Well Street in Hackney, you’d be forgiven for missing the Freed of London ballet shoe factory. But according to the filmmaker Jack Flynn, inside the factory lies “another world”.
Established in 1929, Freed of London manufactures pointe shoes for dancers globally – from young beginners to prima ballerinas. The small factory produces 48,000 standard and 112, 000 bespoke shoes annually – that’s 700 shoes every day.
But who are the people working the machines? This question captivated filmmakers Jack Flynn and Nick David who, in a four-minute, beautifully-crafted short film, tell the stories behind the story of Freed.
“We love the honesty of the film,” says David. “It was a very simple approach, but that’s when you get the magic.”
“Initially we wanted to document the manufacturing process,” adds Flynn, “but what became apparent after a couple of visits, were the stories of the people who worked there.”
Every worker has their own ‘maker’s stamp’ – “mine’s a crown,” says one – and all express a strong sense of pride in their craft. “Not many people can do the work,” explains one employee.
The workshop seems worlds way from the pristine theatres of world-class ballerinas, yet its rhythmic contraptions are almost dancingly hypnotic. “The contrast between ballet and the factory floor was really obvious,” says Jack, “yet we saw a real connection with the sheer physicality of both disciplines.”
In other ways, however, there is a disconnect between the crafts. One shoemaker has been in the business for 25 years, but is yet to go to the ballet. “I’ve seen it on telly,” he says, “but I haven’t gone to theatres or nothing like that. I don’t get the time to.”
Freed’s workers are undoubtedly devoted. Tony Collins started work in 1969 and has been there ever since. Sheila Goodman met her husband of 35 years at the factory. They’ve been working together for 40 years. “We didn’t tell no one that we was getting married!” she recalls. “We got married on the Saturday and on the Monday we were back into work. We didn’t even have a honeymoon!”
The factory’s walls are testament to the spirit and diversity of its workers. One wall is covered in football memorabilia and another cats and Hindu iconography. “I’m curious as to who’s wearing my shoes,” muses one worker. “Without the audience there’d be no dancers, without the dancers there’d be no makers. Life goes round in a circle… It’s unlike anything else.”
I make it to Foyles at 6.30pm on the dot to find a queue spilling from an excited throng in the auditorium. The line runs down the stairs and out into the cafe, where a second – non-priority – queue begins. “It’s the busiest book signing I can remember,” a flustered employee tells me.
The heaving crowds have turned out in force to pick up a copy of street artist Stik’s eponymously-titled new book and get it signed by the mysterious man himself – who, perched on a raised platform, is donning a paint-spattered shirt, dark shades and a black leather cap.
His heavy, rose-coloured publication documents a curiously affecting, politically-motivated body of work that relies primarily on basic stick figures. It’s a portfolio, so to speak, that first started to appear on Hackney’s walls more than a decade ago and has since spread across the globe.
A few days later, we chat on the phone and he’s as genial as he was with fans earlier in the week. “It was incredible”, he says of the event. “I was only supposed to be doing an hour, but in the end I stayed there for about three.”
A Child Watching Over a Sleeping Parent by Stik
Softly spoken and oozing enthusiasm, Stik is keen to talk about his connection with this publication’s sister title, the Hackney Citizen. Roughly half a decade ago, whilst living in St Mungo’s Hostel on Mare Street, he began a fruitful collaboration with the paper, which, he explains, gave him a structure that would eventually lead to his first book.
“I’d speak to the editors and we’d pick a local news story. I would find a specific place relevant to that story, do a mural and then I’d write a brief column explaining why that painting was there and what news issue it was relating to,” he says.
“Doing that monthly piece really made me think about street art on a much deeper level and what sort of impact I could have on the community – how I could represent my community through art. So that was the catalyst for the book.”
The original publications make for an interesting stand-alone project. The first he sends across to me includes an image of Pole Dancer, a 2010 piece scrawled outside a strip club in Great Eastern Street. The work portrays one of his signature black-and-white stick people swinging, eyes closed,
around a pole.
“That was in reference to Hackney Council’s move to clamp down on what they deemed indecent sex clubs,” he says. “They cut out a lot of the healthy, consenting adult subculture in Hackney under the guise of trying to curb sex trafficking… So, yeah, I did that piece to sort of celebrate the kink culture and just draw reference to what
was happening.”
Pole Dancer by Stik, published in the Hackney Citizen (November, 2010)
Other examples of Stik’s work that were produced during that time include Lovers, Waiting Room and Children of Fire; these were done in response to the council’s eviction of a Dalston Lane ‘queer squat’, cuts to the NHS, and the “civil unrest… triggered by the police killing of Mark Duggan”, respectively. He goes on to explain that, as well as conveying a wider social message, each mural contains a narrative personal to him.
Of Lovers, which shows two androgynous figures embracing against a red background, he says: “The squat was a safe house for people from oppressive regimes, for queer and transgender people who were not safe in their home towns or home countries… There was no real service like it within the mainstream infrastructure – this was something that was lacking.
“But it was also a place which I had a personal connection with. I belonged to that community, you know, that’s me in the painting. A lot of it is my story – it’s my experience of being marginalised, of being oppressed and how that relates to society at large.”
Climate Change, by Stik
It’s interesting that Stik describes his work as a means of telling his own story. Outside of his art, biographical details are sketchy. His email moniker is simply Stik Person and he stresses a set of “strict rules” when it comes to answering questions about his past – it’s not even known where he originates from.
He does, however, talk relatively freely about his time in Hackney, which, going by artistic evidence, began sometime around 2003. He explains that when he first arrived he spent time squatting in London Fields Lido, during the period leading up to its renovation and reopening in the mid-2000s.
“I used to live in the changing rooms there,” he says. “I slept in an art shipping case that I’d salvaged from Momart, the art shipping company. It was a plywood packing case that according to its label once contained a Kandinsky and was destined for, I think, Claudia Schiffer, somewhere in Hollywood.”
At this point, I’m not sure if he’s pulling my leg, but he goes on to describe what sounds like a dark, difficult and deeply informative period of his life.
“I was homeless for many years and I was very cold and hungry for a long time,” he says, “but I would always find abandoned buildings. I didn’t have any reason to sleep in doorways in Mare Street because I always managed to somehow get through the door.”
A Couple Hold Hands in the Street, by Stik. Photograph: Claude Crommelin
He refers back to the Pole Dancer piece: “It’s very personal to me. When you’re homeless you find all sorts of ways of making a living and I’ve had to make ends meet through all sorts of things. That’s why I identify with the struggle of sex workers in Hackney and the stigmatisation that they’ve had put on them.”
The more he talks, the more enigmatic and fascinating he becomes; the more complicated his work is. He describes with zeal his many experiences painting abroad – the highlight, for me, being a set of wind turbines he worked on in Norway – and what the future holds now the world is interested.
“I feel very warmly embraced by the communities that I have worked with,” he says. “I feel very grateful as an artist for that experience. It’s an exciting journey – it’s a huge responsibility, but I do feel that it’s my responsibility as an artist to respond to the current political state of affairs.”
Stik’s book, which forms one mammoth project, is a triumph. His pared-down, sublimely minimal approach delivers touching snippets of human experience and explores private city space in a dramatically public manner. He’s both engaged and engaging; it’s easy to understand his fast-rising popularity in the art scene.
As we tie up our conversation, Stik makes an obscure reference to Somerset, and when I ask more he shrugs it off and mutters something about friends and some work he’s got going on there.
I can’t help but feel it’s a hint at a previous life; another scrap of the obscure biography he’s been scribbling on walls everywhere. I can’t be sure, but it’s fun to speculate.
Stik is published by Century. RRP: £20. ISBN: 9781780893334
Stik’s Print Launch is on 24 September from 5-8pm at the Education Centre, Homerton University Hospital, Homerton Row, E9 6SR
