For Tracey Emin, it’s less a case of “not in my back yard”, more “not in my
Brick Lane”. This month, she joined many of Britain’s leading artists in
sending an open letter to the capital’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, deploring
the redevelopment of what they call the “cultural heart” of east London.
Emin and fellow resident artists - among them Dinos Chapman, Rachel Whiteread
and Gary Hume - claim plans to build a cluster of towers around Brick Lane,
Bethnal Green and Shoreditch are “a latterday gold rush” that represents
“corporate plunder of the most cynical kind”.
So it is with trepidation that I point out to Emin - who has lived in the East
End since 1982 - the whiff of nimbyism surrounding the Save Shoreditch
campaign. Thankfully, her famous temper is directed at Livingstone. “I’m
sure he wouldn’t like it if it was happening where he lives,” she fumes.
“These plans have been developed with no regard for the community
whatsoever. I’ve tried to discuss [our complaints] with him and he was
totally dismissive. He said that people like me, snobby people, are stopping
progress.”
Emin, 44, first moved to the East End to study at the Sir John Cass school of
art, media and design in Whitechapel. The area was still, quite literally, a
bomb site. “Most of Brick Lane was derelict. There were still a lot of
Jewish fabric shops, with only 10 Bangladeshi restaurants,” she recalls. In
the early 1990s, when the original Spitalfields market closed to move to new
premises further east in Leyton, empty market buildings could be rented for
next to nothing.
The Young British Artists (YBAs) - painters, sculptors and conceptual artists,
named after a series of exhibitions of their works staged at the Saatchi
Gallery in the early 1990s - were quick to seize their opportunity. Abigail
Lane lived on Curtain Road; Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume had studios just round
the corner. A few years later, Emin recalls, “we all had studios in
Wentworth Street and Brick Lane: me, Mat Collishaw, Sam Taylor-Wood, Jake
and Dinos Chapman”.
As rents started to rise, less fortunate artists were forced to move further
east, to cheaper Hackney Wick or Stratford. Thanks to Charles Saatchi’s
patronage of the YBAs, however, their reputation soared, and in 1993 Emin
and Lucas rented a shop on Redchurch Street, at the top of Brick Lane, to
showcase their wares. Everything for sale had been made in the studios
upstairs, from T-shirts and badges to posters and tiny sculptures.
Since then, Emin - who achieved notoriety with her tent entitled Everyone I
Have Ever Slept with 1963-1995 and My Bed, which was shortlisted for the
Turner prize in 1999 - has amassed her own property portfolio in
Spitalfields. In 2001, she bought a five-storey Huguenot townhouse for
£900,000 - a house on her street recently sold for £2.4m. She has also
acquired a former weaving works, Tenter Ground, for just under £4m. Those
who bought at the start of the influx of artists have fared even better: the
artist duo Gilbert and George, who live around the corner, bought their
weavers’ townhouse for £22,000 in the 1970s.
Emin is justifiably proud of her Grade II-listed house. It is, she claims, one
of the oldest townhouses in Britain, built in 1729. “You’re living inside an
antique - it has all the original floorboards and staircases - so you have a
responsibility to keep it functioning and running properly,” she says. “I’m
constantly repairing the wood-panelled rooms, clearing the guttering,
mending the slate roof.” She has tried to reflect the Huguenots’ sense of
style in the house, using a Farrow & Ball palette of “murky off-whites,
greeney-greys and a couple of wilder colours, such as blue-black”.
The Huguenots - French Protestants who coined the term refugiés when they were
driven out of France by the Catholic king Louis XIV in the 1680s - were
silk-weavers and artisans. Theirs were some of the first brick townhouses,
after the destruction of wooden houses by the Great Fire of London in 1666.
According to Emin, they also invented wall paint, replacing dour English
plaster with muted whites and greens.
“The Huguenots understood about building and about terraced houses,” she says.
“They are much bigger than they look from the outside, but they’re on a good
human scale, so you don’t feel like you’re rattling around. Mine has 10
rooms - some people could have 15, depending on the layout - and they’re
proportioned well, with beautiful light that goes through both sides of the
house.”
Emin vows never to sell the house or the weaving works, but intends instead to
preserve them as a piece of history. Tenter Ground (named after the
tenterhooks the weavers used to hang their fabrics out to dry) will be
renovated in the same style as her house, keeping all the original fittings
and floors. And it will be used as a studio, in the tradition of the weavers
who first inhabited it.
“It’s brilliant, the last building of its kind,” she enthuses. “It needed to
be bought by someone like me.” It went on sale at £1.5m, but Emin is
believed to have paid more than that again to buy out the leases of the
current tenants. It will be 8,000 sq ft when she has completed her
extension.
Emin says that her problem with the developers is not about regeneration, but
about the local residents’ right to daylight. “I am pro-commerce, I welcome
regeneration of all areas and I really like new architecture. What I’m
against is blocking people’s light in residential areas.”
The proposals are for a group of buildings providing commercial and
residential units, ranging from four to 25 storeys, on Bethnal Green Road,
in the low-rise heart of the Brick Lane area. The local authority, Tower
Hamlets, has approved the plans, which Emin says will mean that many of the
East End’s historic streets will be shrouded in perpetual shade.
The developer, Telford Homes, says: “This regeneration, creating new homes,
new jobs and positive mixed-use redevelopment, is designed to revitalise the
area close to the cultural quarter of Brick Lane.”
Local campaigners argue that the approval of these buildings will open the
floodgates for developments at Bishopsgate Goodsyard, in Shoreditch. They
believe plans are soon to be submitted by the developer Hammerson for a
group of towers up to 50 storeys high, covering an area of 13 acres.
Emin claims developers wouldn’t get away with it in urban hot spots such as
Soho or Clerkenwell, but says the East End is still thought of as “slummy”:
“They think there aren’t people there who care. That’s why it’s important
that we artists sign this letter. We care about the way things look.”
While admitting she is using her celebrity to speak up for the area, Emin
insists she is not singling out her coterie for special treatment. “I’m not
saying artists should have a welfare state,” she says. “I’m saying it would
be good if some of the original infrastructure could stay. That’s what makes
the area special. Commerce should come in and have an understanding or
sympathy for the area, not bulldoze and destroy what was beautiful about it.”
For Emin, the East End is of almost mythical importance. The Romans used the
area east of the city walls as a burial ground; in medieval times, a
hospital, St Mary Spital, was built on the site. “In the ground just near my
house, there is apparently a runic circle,” she says.
“The whole area is supposed to have a healing quality, which is why the
hospital was built here.”
It is, Emin acknowledges fate to discover cheap, spacious areas with
interesting history and good aesthetics, only to see the developers move in.
Shivering away in their freezing cold shop in the early 1990s, she and Lucas
had always known they were on to something. “We used to say, ‘In 20 years’
time, this place will have bijoux cafes with umbrellas outside, and the
secondhand car lot will be long gone’,” Emin recalls. “We were absolutely
right.”
www.saveshoreditch.com
I'm with Tracy all the way - it isn't a case of "not in my backyard" - its a case of "not in anybody's backyard". What we are talking about here is developers treating East London like some kind of new frontier, to be exploited for "take the money and run" profits, with no consideration for the needs, let alone the character of the area.
Brick Lane does not need "regeneration", it has done a perfectly good job of regenerating itself. Brick Lane, of course should be allowed to evolve, but this isn't evolution - it is imposition, and it is building the inner city decay of the future. Most of these type of steel and glass building have a design life of not more than thirty years, and if these developments are allowed to go ahead then in twenty years Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Bishopsgate will look like Elephant and Castle does now.
Maybe the Save Shoreditch campaign does have a whiff of nimbyism, whats wrong with that? Nimbys are people who CARE about their neighbourhood.
Keith Chilvers, Bethnal Green,
I grew up in brick lane back then (late 70s early 80s) it was a bit run down but we did'nt know at the time as everywhere we lived was the same. We all need somewhere to call home and the east end was just that for me.
Cobbled streets and milky coffees from the cafe. A hot "bagel" pronounced "buy-gaul" but not by Tracy Im sure are just a few images that spring to mind when I think back to brick lane.
Having lived there before Tracey I feel a strong link with brick lane. And to see people like her who ruined it for a generation of locals by seeing "round our way" as a escape from high rents and now sits on a multi million pound property investment leaves a kind of puzzled look on my face.
Im sure she thinks shes very "right on" having to fight the power and is obv interested in the history of the east end. but come on love - in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. You and all your snobby mates with blue-black? walls have nice houses. What about da youth.
Tony Davis, leigh on sea, uk
10 out of 10 to Tracy - thank god (or whoever serves your spiritual needs ) we have people like her around who have the foresight to know and understand why London is London and not yet another homogenous ( that spelling will have to do) city with souless and Aesthetically bankrupt excuses for living spaces like so many other cities ive been to - i was in brick lane on sunday and couldnt help feeling immensly proud of this fair city when i see people from places like spain and germany greatly admiring the special history and atmosphere of the area - leave the weeds growing out of the brickwork and let areas like these be an an inspiration to the young people who one day will add to the immense creative spirit that this country is a world leader in
john evans , london ,
If Brick Lane wasn't allowed to evolve then the Huguenots would still be there. Why, all of a sudden, should we stop anyone else moving in.
Maybe Emin is too old now to move to another tiny flat in a run down area with her artist friends, maybe she likes her neighbourhood just as it is, well, Trace, welcome to the real world, the rest of us Londoners have watched our neighbourhoods change beyoud recognition without any say or input so why should you be special.
Like it or lump it, love.
Steve, London,
Sadly Tracy Britain is becoming a bland ladscape of new and ghastly blocks of concrete and local areas are losing their individual character.
Who is behind this trashing of our history?
We are governmed by illiterate council and civil servants who have little idea of the destruction they are creating.
Tracy - why dont you set up a Petition to save the character of the Uk?
I trained at The London Hospital in Whitechapel - a world class hospital in a fascinating area.
There was a brilliant hospital In Edinburgh, It was right in the centre of the city so easy to get at and visitor friendly - but the land was worth a great deal of money to the Council ... so it was sold for a knock down price and will be fancy flat!!!
Meanwhile the New Edinburgh Infirmary is on the outskirts of the city and challenging for the elderly to visit. There are not enough parking places and the cost of parking is prohibitive.
So Brick Lane or Edinburgh .. we need to keep valued areas
Trish Niblock, Edinburgh, Scotland UK
If we could all prove our 'ancient rights to light', perhaps we could stop these developments from going forward.
ren, london, london
We live on Curtain Road in the shadow of the newly build Bishopsgate Tower. It is horrendous. When it is sunny it blocks the light from making it to our roof, thus making lazy summer days reading a book a thing of the past. Also when it's sunny the sun reflects off the giant glass structure and is blinding. When it is windy we have to put up with terrible wind tunnels that could probably knock someone who is unstable on their feet over. They are planning to build a hotel just as big next to Bishopsgate Tower which will pretty much block out all of the sun from the east for us. Good on Tracey for giving the cause some profile, we don't want Shoreditch and the East End to become yet another soulless, cultureless corporate hole that dies at the weekend.
Dave, Shoreditch, London
Brick Lane lost its cultural heritage 40 years ago love. It used to be the cockney heartlands but now its closer to Mecca!
Matt, Naples, Italy
There's an election for Mayor of London coming up, why not use it as an opportunity to let Ken "the developer's friend" know what you think of his plans?
Sarah N., London, UK
We have the same problem at the top of Brick Lane on Virginia Road, between the beautiful flower market on Columbia Road and Brick Lane itself. Only one neighbour was part of the public consultation process. Tower Hamlets said about 60 letters were sent out to residents to inform them, but only ONE person received one. Tower Hamlets isn't interested in the local people at all. Permission was granted by one planning officer only, not even a planning committee. The view of a beautiful row of Victoria terraces will be gone and replaced with shade, as the big building they've given permission is south facing and our street, Gascoigne Place, is to the north of this. It's awful and unfair.
debbie, shoreditch,
Yes Tracey, Fight! Fight! Fight! to save the Lane. I grew up on Petty Coat Lane, went to school at Davenant Foundation -179 Whitchapel Road, and studied Medicine just across the road, at the London Hospital - just opposite, and where William Booth founded the Salvation Army from his Tent Mission. Surely 'The Lane' and all this area with it's continuous throughput of ethnic variety must be one of the world's richest cultural heritages. Fight on to save our beloved Lane.
Graham g. Mills, Mianyang City, China