Unit 8, 44 Gillender Street, London E14 6RP,
Tel 020 7538 4545/020 8538 3388, E-mail , www.hidden-histories.org.uk
2007_esch_m11a_07
Interviewer:
Interviewee: Peter Owen
Ok, can you tell me your name and can you spell it please?
Yeah, it’s Peter Owen, P-ET-E-R O-W-E-N.
And can you tell me your date of birth?
Yeah, 19th October, 1959.
And do you remember where you lived in Leytonstone?
Yeah, it was at 111 Dyers Hall Road, which is D-Y-E-R’S hall road.
And when did you move to the area?
Um, I think it was March 1985, I lived in Brixton area for years before that, mainly when I was a student at Chelsea School of Art and then afterwards I lived in a road called Hawarden Grove for about a year before I got hold of an ACME housing association house, which was the one in Dyers Hall Road. Um, previously lived with two other artists, student- friends of mine in Hawarden Grove house near East Dulwich, but I wanted to live on my own, and work on my own, and have space to live and work on my own, and the ACME housing association properties that I had been to before allowed you to do that, and it was quite a good deal really, £17 a week I think, £17 a week? Maybe £17 a month for a house, two bedrooms, three bedroom house, garden, and I had studio space, and lived there. Wasn’t very comfortable because it was cold and it was run down, but then that was the reason I had the place in the first place, and why it was so cheap.
So how did you hear about the houses that were available through ACME?
Well, I’d had tutors who lived in ACME houses, and I had some acquaintances who lived in this area that I’d met once or twice, but I knew nothing about Leyton and Leytonstone, but I was aware that ACME had been running studios and houses for years, and again a lot of my tutors at college lived in them, and I gathered they were cheap, ok, flexible in terms of what you could do to them, but I hadn’t really- I didn’t know what the areas were like that they were in, because when I was at college I lived in housing association stock- I’d had a Quadrant Housing Association stock, I had a good idea of what to expect when you walk in, because many times we would move house, every six months and you would walk into a hell hole and kind of have to clear it up and do it up, and it meant you had very cheap rent, three of us living in the house, so you could say we were blasé about it, we weren’t scared about it, thinking of our comfort, cheap was the main thing because we could spend our money on other things then, making our work and socialising which were the priorities at the time, for us. Actually, became a priority when I moved to Leytonstone actually. So, you didn’t have to really worry about money and also the state would pay the rent if necessary, they wouldn’t complain about it, because it was almost nothing, so that really appealed to me, but it was strange when I first came up to visit this house, because I was used to living in South London, and this was deepest, if you can say, North East London, which was a complete mystery to me, I did know some people vaguely who lived down the road, so I got off the train and thought, this isn’t even London, this isn’t right (both laugh), so um, and it seemed to take a long time as well, to get to South London to here, which is obviously quite nonsensical now, you get a much bigger picture as you get older, so it’s also quite strange sitting here in Leytonstone (laughs) talking about it. So I remember, that kind of, I suppose a year out of college, I did an MA at Chelsea, so I suppose I was kind of, quite green about things, my main intention was to carry on with my work, as an artist, the whole getting a job thing was not high on the agenda for people graduating then, um, so I walked down the road, saw this house and thought, mid terrace, probably Edwardian, something like that, late Victorian house, had a quick look at it, I can’t even remember getting a tour of it with someone from ACME, I must have done, can’t imagine just walking into an empty property, but I could have done, I had no memory of that-
So you don’t actually remember them handing over the keys or rent book being passed to you or-
No, what I do remember is having an interview with people at ACME, to see if I was eligible, because you had to be an artist and prove to be a working artist, because it wasn’t- it was an artist association, you couldn’t, if you weren’t an artist you didn’t get a property so-
And so was there a waiting list?
There was a waiting list, yes, but I think they were acquiring quite a lot of properties quite quickly in those days, because it’s hard to remember London then- but there must have been a lot of empty properties, probably more than there are now and rules have probably changed about housing associations and how they operate, but um, I sort of knew I wouldn’t necessarily have to wait very long, I didn’t know where it would be, they had properties in Bow as well, but um, I think I had some sort of awareness that there was a growing community in Leytonstone, of artists who had been here for three or four years before I applied, that I didn’t know any of them really, and I didn’t really apply to get on their list to become part of an artist community, it was more to do with getting a property that was flexible and allowed me to do what I wanted to do. Um, because in the house in East Dulwich I had a big bedroom as a studio, so I was used to working, I’d sort of made that leap into making work, since leaving college, a bit of a slow process, but I had done it, so I knew that I could continue to do that, and they always adapted rooms in our houses to make studios out of, because we all had similar intentions. Sort of make do, adapt and get on with it kind of approach, which held me in good stead later on actually, but we will come to that as we go through. There’s probably a lot of people who look at this empty house, which was actually in quite good nick when they moved to Leyton later, (both laugh) and um, alright, it’s pretty bare, kitchen is appalling, and it probably needs a good clean, and I didn’t have a load of furniture anyway, so I said, probably said yes immediately, um, because it was, I suppose at that time it became some sort of adventure to go and move somewhere, a lot of my friends thought I was insane, because they were all in South London, um, and you know, doing similar things, but um, because they couldn’t work out why I wanted to move somewhere where I didn’t know anybody, I probably had no answer to that at the time, but I knew I was quite gregarious, and I could make contacts quite easily and get used to it, so I wasn’t worried about that, I mean, in lots of ways, it’s quite a naïve position, to think I just want to get on with my work, but I also think it is a really positive position because a lot of people give up on that, I want to get on with working very easily, because I think, it’s not that it is too hard, but just not comfortable, but I was bloody minded and naïve enough to think I’ll just do this anyway, and my parents were saying you don’t need to do this, you can go and get a job and live much more comfortably, and I said, well, I want to do this, it’s not about what you want, or what you believe is the right way, so um, I took the property on, and tried to make it into something ok, I didn’t have a phone, which was interesting, because we had never had a phone in our houses, because we moved around so quickly, the group, the three of us, but there was a phone box on Grove Green Road that I used quite regularly, it meant nobody could contact me by phone, so that was quite almost like, stone age aspect of it, but you know, no central heating in this property obviously, because it had never been installed, I think it was an Indian family had lived there previously, which was quite hard to believe because it must have been a council property for ACME to get hold of it, I think the neighbours were council, it wasn’t a comfortable property, I couldn’t have imagined it being comfortable.
It would have been unusual at that point to sort of have Asian/Indian community, in this area maybe?
It wasn’t a community though, because they were quite a nice large family, they would come back and pick up mail and stuff like that, I remember, and um, I don’t know where they moved to, but it was odd, unless they took an awful lot of stuff out with them, it just wasn’t a comfortable house, or the council hadn’t been, hadn’t supported it for ages, in a good way, but anyway, I had a house with bare boards, bare walls, didn’t have any broken windows or anything like that, so that was good, and I just sort of, brought what I had into this house, obviously much bigger than what I had before, I had two rooms, a shred living room, kitchen and bathroom before, so I think ACME had to put in, no, they didn’t have to put a bath in, and sink into this, this had a bath and sink, it was pink, I remember, with lots of gunge round the edges where they must have had some sort of cupboards, it wasn’t something you would bring your mum to, or even your girlfriend actually, um, but more on that later, (laughs) s0 I had a house which was great, and the central line ran at the bottom of the garden, so I had access to places very easily, funny thing about central line at the bottom of the garden, I first moved in, because I decided to have my bedroom on the ground floor back room, like the equivalent of this, I’d get woken up at 5.30 every morning but the central line, central line trains going, in like weeks, I didn’t hear it anymore, because you would just get used to it, but at first it was like, what have I done? I’m not going to have any sleep, so that was good. And people, when I moved in, I think I had maybe a month to decorate it, had some help from the housing association to bed you in a bit, so you aren’t’ just dumped-
Right, a month, I mean, that’s how much time they would give you?
Yeah, just to kind of-
Rather than money?
No, they didn’t give you money, no they gave you money for materials, so say some of the houses up the road had all their windows smashed out, they would pay to have the windows put back in, luckily mine were intact, um, and they would pay for some money towards paint I think, and a limited amount, just so you could get it together, so you could live in it, but again, it didn’t provide you with any heating of any kind, I remember living with a fan heater for many years, and a Calor gas heater eventually, but that was horrible too, but so, I mean it was only me living there for quite some time, and it was great, because it was up to me what I did, what I did in there, I mean, I did make a lot of work in the studio upstairs, um, probably did a lot of nothing for quite a while as well, because I had all that time, to myself, because I didn’t have a job, I just had me, and the house, and the studio and one very good thing that was different to now was that there were lots of skips in the area, because I made work with found objects, and skips were great in those days, I walk up and down the road these days and look at skips and there is nothing, never anything in them that you would want to take home, not even good sheets of timber that I would collect, you know, 20 years ago, and stockpile them in my studio, because I was going to use them. Or, you know, I would find a working record player, which was my record player for years, I just needed some speakers attached to it, and it was in a skip, because people would just throw things away, I don’t know whether it was to do with recycling, and a lot of stuff for my work I found in skips, and again I would stick pile it until it became useful or not, and throw it away if it didn’t, so, I did make quite a lot of work, so um, but it was a very cold house in the winter, because there was no heating to heat the house to warm it up, it’s very odd now, so conditioned to central heating, and um, double glazing and stuff, um, if you don’t have the heating on it the winter you would go ooohhhh, but before I probably wouldn’t shiver because you are used to it, so I used to go home to my parents at certain points and come back and get a cold immediately because all the bugs had been warmed up, a classic, used to happen all the time, and I thought well I think I prefer, some ways prefer the cold because I am not going to get ill.
What about fireplaces, because there must have been a number of fireplaces around?
There were, but it didn’t occur to me, or it was another expense to get those chimneys swept, I suppose I could have done, I think I was more interested in having one of those gas fires that were instant. I suppose at the time, I wasn’t, I can’t imagine I was on the ball, I just wanted to get on with it, I didn’t have any money, and if I did I would use that to socialise, because I liked being with people, so um, and if I was on my own, most days I wanted to go out, so I wasn’t going to spend that on doing my house up, if I could avoid it, and so I did various things, it felt like a working house to me.
And it was a live work house in that sense, that was how it was rented to you?
Yes, yeah, yes, yeah. So um, as were lot of the other properties down the road, so that’s how the community sort of artists built along that route. It’s um……..I know this is all quite jumbled up, but it’s quite interesting how it fits together, so as I remember a picture of the house, and me in a way, um, because I sort of lived there for five years without much, without much regular work, I’d kind of get work from friends, and some for long periods, some for short periods, which suited me, because it was, usually when I needed it, I would go looking for it when I needed it, otherwise I would be happy going along the way I did, it’s um, interesting you can’t say that to students now, just go out in the world and do what you like,-