Sue Webster on Punk, The Mole House & The Art of Non-Conformity

0:00I 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 pushbikes with their kids, telling them about the Mole Man, 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 designed the life I want to live and I'm designing the space that I want to live in 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.

1:03Sue 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 epicentre 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.

1:52and 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 slash homing with matt I love this episode it's raw it's very honest 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.

2:49Here it is, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Hi, Sue. Hello. Thanks so much for doing this. It's very exciting to be here in your house. Okay. And 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? So my dad is an electrician. He's not alive anymore, but my dad was an electrician.

3:34His dad left home when he was very little. And so then 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.

4:18So I think he carried a chip around with him. So my dad had this thing where he was always trying to better the family situation. 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 neighbourhood. 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 centre and into a little village. So I went to a village school and my brother came along.

4:57And then me 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 timber, 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. house 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 to build this house we 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 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.

6:04And if you 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 um yeah so listening to John Peel and listening to the really early like uh indie music that is musical choice his tastes I guess rubbed off on me that sort of stuff weird sort of music that used to play so we moved around quite a lot as my dad was had aspirations for the family so um I was always the new girl at school and I remember just uh 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 um and it didn't help that we were living in caravan at the time when we moved to the area where we sort of lived the long I lived 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 so yeah living in a caravan i mean the obvious question is were you able to find enough space for yourself because it's obviously quite intense because it's so tight well we had one i think it was one acre of land plot of land that my dad bought okay i really don't have much memories of that house being built but i know my granddad did the timber frame frame my dad obviously was the electrician and uh he just got in uh friends to help build it brickwork on the outside but we the plot of land was right next to a park um and so i was really in good at football so i just used to take the ball and next to us was uh 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?

8:13David Shackleton. I'll never forget him. So then, yeah, then I had some friends. But we were kind of known as the gyppos 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah, so, yeah, no, it wasn't restricting.

8:53No, 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. Yeah. So have you got one sister? One sister, one brother. One sister, one brother. Older sister, younger brother. Okay, so you're in the middle. the problem child is that is that i always think middle children 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've just reminded that of how cute babies are again, aren't you?

9:38Sort 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. He's not, he's much, he towers over me and Karen now. Yeah, he's the tallest. So when you say that you're the problem child, is that, in all seriousness, is that how you sort of cast yourself or is that how others cast you? I just think that it's a well-known fact, isn't it, that second-born, there's a first-born, second-born theory, isn't there? Yeah. And the first-borns, Tim was a second-born, and he's got an older brother.

10:15And it's kind of like, I always think, and it's really true, I've lived that. And first-borns are always, they like police you. Yeah, sure. You know, like we are, you know, we know the rules, we know the ropes, you know. 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 okay 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 uh what she called Polly out of uh Peaky Blinders after reminder got that roll on Polly so where does your mum come into this picture then uh my mum uh family uh they ran a post office yeah 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 uh it's incredible when i think back and i look at photographs of it they didn't have any wallpaper so it was he made wooden wooden patterns of patterns made out like they were all geometric so I mean my granddad was really strict I think he must have been I think it 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 had that smell of wood and of like uh stuff that uh you know preservative and they had apple trees like out on their land and so they They were actually quite self-sufficient.

11:53Yeah. By the time I was born and brought up, they didn't run the post office anymore. They lived in their wooden house and grew their own food. It was incredible. What was it like to your mum? 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 um 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 theatre 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 he 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.

13:17And 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 Leicester de Montfort Hall in the 60s. Amazing. 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. 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.

13:58You said in an interview I read. So was there something about, I mean, do you... Oh, the power dynamics within the house. 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? No, not at all. But then again, that was the 70s growing up. And I guess, you know, that was all just where I grew up. There were no female women that ran their own businesses. You know, me dad eventually, you know, he left the electrical company that was working for and then set up on his own business.

14:37so he was he very much had bigger aspirations set up his own business eventually got his own workshop and I used to work for him and as a in the holidays I had part-time jobs working for my dad I used to love it he used to love my dad used to work at the Finder's 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 they'd missed the labeling process you know tins and uh tins of this and uh frozen stuff that we put in the freezer and like it was like russian roulette is it dog food is it human food we don't know until it thaws out so pretty much grown up on a diet of tinned and frozen food and i still eat i mean my freezer is full of frozen food yeah I mean I still love frozen food yeah fish fingers frozen everything yeah I love it that's fantastic but yeah it was we had dodgy dinners so yeah because my mum was not not a cook no but uh going back to your question um I think that was everyone's mum you know especially where we're you know in the 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 that was that was what mums did mums dragged the kids around the shops and dad met for lunch with 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 cafe at British Home Stores or wherever they'd order a pot of tea and then my mum I get his kick under the table and she passed me a sandwich because they didn't they couldn't afford to buy food from the Glitchish Home Stores Cafe.

16:23We got caught once and it was awful. Couldn't go back again. 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 easier. So what was school like for you? Describe that. Did you feel like an outsider somehow? 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 had to leave behind and move to the other side of Leicester.

16:58We were, I think, South Leicester, Wigston. And then we moved to North Leicester, which is near Loughborough. You know, where they, hey up, you duck. And I was like, hey up? What do you mean, hey up? You know, it was quite funny. Mum and Dad used to call each other duck. I was like, and then there was chick, and it was like really weird. 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 gyppos that came to school. My sister fitted in better than me because she smoked.

17:37That was the difference, yeah. You were a bit like Arda, considered a little bit tougher. Why didn't you? I just never had the, no. Never got into it? No, never smoked. Did you? I did a long time ago, yeah. Yeah. It's one of them things. It just never appealed to me, smoking. Yeah. So how did that manifest itself then? You feeling like you weren't fitting in? Did you get bullied or what was it like? 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 the and it was mainly boys called me a witch uh because of the eyebrows so I'd wander around school playground not kind of everyone it was weird it's like everyone had made their 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 lunch time 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 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'd always run to my sister for help she fitted in you know easier than me and uh you don't want to keep running to your sister so then I started pretending to be ill so that I go home okay 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'd just like end up at the ed mistress'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 so I think you were 13 weren't you when you were taken into psychiatric care is that right yeah 13 or 14 I can't remember but um 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 I you know it did something to my head and I was it just manifested itself into a into a proper illness a psychiatric illness if you like um and it became very dangerous and uh so I had to be taken away from uh and putting I had to go and see a psychiatrist when I was little which was awful it's not like now where people like admit to all that stuff and it's cool and trendy I need 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 uh I couldn't tell anyone what was happening and I had to go and then me 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 because 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 because I wasn't conforming if you like and then I was put on medication which was even worse then you 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 it with a load of nutters i mean it's so tough because it's so young isn't it yeah yeah looking because you didn't know what was going on 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 i then i yeah then eventually it became a real illness yeah kind of i went down a sort of dark hole yeah i find that so interesting though that you've taken it on yourself haven't you you're kind of you're sort of implying that it was something that you manifested or that was your fault somehow yeah but where did it come from because people say what's the matter you know when you when you talk to a psychiatrist or you your parents were when parents actually got my dad was 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.

21:47But 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 I think school can 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 so I guess people wear crystals and stuff like that don't they yeah but I used to sense it when I was much older that I could 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 he had to avoid people yeah because people can be quite cruel yeah and and maybe not even intentionally just especially if they're in a gang you know so it sounds like that culturally and within your family and and that that time in general you would have felt a real sense of shame did you did you feel that did you feel like there was something you were broken in some way 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 yeah the medication was supposed to be there to help you but it's they give you sort of downers and they if you like sleeping pills as well I was on sleeping pills and and uh they get the bloody doses wrong you know I couldn't wake up in the morning I go just 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 uh 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's just too embarrassing it's too yeah too um 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 then that was okay because I It always used to happen in double chemistry.

24:06So the teacher just thought I was skiving off. Okay. Didn't realise that. So I got into trouble at school without actually, because I couldn't tell them what was happening. Oh, I see. Eventually, yeah. That's so hard. Yeah. Where does art come into this? As a saviour. Well, I always drew. Yeah. I mean, there was something that I was always good at, drawing. Just always drew. but again didn't know that there was ever going to be a end result there like I say I love playing football but that wasn't allowed you know all the things wasn't allowed to play football at school because that was for the boys really yeah yeah not not until now where it's now encouraged doesn't it but I just couldn't understand why I wasn't allowed to be in the boys team because I was as good as they were I love playing football it was a thing that I enjoyed um 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 i'm like no no the girls got to stay in and learn to sew and i was like that's not fair i remember actually saying that to the teachers that's not fair but of course they were there the rules and 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?

25:27Yeah, it's staggering, really. 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, which was great, and concerts.

26:01So 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. Well, on music then, let's talk about punk rock. Yeah. Because this was a big thing for you, wasn't it? 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 um 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 well so speaking of people that are almost called Sue so it was Susie and the Banshees wasn't it that really captured you right well I think that was a band so Susie Sue was um was like my idea of what my mother should look like yeah jet black hair cropped hair that was black already and then dyed even blacker um 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 um yeah and so when I first set eyes on Susie Sue it was in the pages of the NME and it was like cropped black hair and uh Cleopatra style makeup and uh just wearing almost like uh underwear you know like a bra on the outside of your clothes and uh thigh high patent leather boots with a killer heel um on stage you know strutting her stuff it was just like um it was it was like someone had broke the 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 uh I was home for a bit and then went I had to go back into another hospital away from home um and I used to in Cambridge and I used to um You know, when I was allowed out, just walk around the record shops.

28:11And my first T-shirt I bought was Susie the Banshee's T-shirt. But, you know, when I get out, I was like wearing the, I had the Banshee's T-shirt and the headband. And yeah, so it kind of became a bit of a saviour, 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 revelation to see that women were allowed to be outspoken and be in front of a band with the men behind.

29:01Yeah. And so, yeah, and so I just became, when I came out of the Adderbrooks 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 appeared, you get wind that like, it's probably in the newspaper, Susie's going to be on Top of Pops. Susie's going to be on this I just press record and I would record everything on VHS tape so I had this show reel of Susie the Banshees and uh 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 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 he 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've 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 but i could never understand why people wouldn't keep these things this was like this meant something i'd blue tack them on the bedroom wall all my ticket all my concert tickets but you blue tack them to the wall you know next to the posters next to your records these were these were like uh 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 I can't believe it I want to take you to art college now yes on the first day there I believe yes you met a guy called Tim Noble exactly tell us about that I was actually in Europe I I I mean arts going to art school and doing a degree was something that was never ever mentioned in my household because nobody'd ever done it before my mum and dad hadn't done it my older sister didn't leave home and go to um go into further education so it was my art teacher that uh 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 some 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 you know you do double art or yeah you do 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 you know I did a level art and a level design um and then my portfolio was my teacher said well why don't you apply to go to you know do a degree and I was like I don't know what that is and so um 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 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 Poly was fantastic because you can do a you do a little 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 uh my my tutor said well you actually uh you should apply to do a degree in fine art and I had no idea what that what that meant you know because I was really good at like drawing and painting so I I yeah I applied to uh to do a degree in fine art I didn't want to go to London I'd know 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 um interview with all my canvases propped up when 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 um my interview with the i got a place at nottingham poly poly yeah and when we had to go and enroll um i was a day late because i'd been in europe watching susie the banshees on tour So I went with a boyfriend at the time and we went to Amsterdam, Brussels and Bonn in Germany.

34:36We 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 Ottingham 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 because in the back pages of the NME they were Paula Yates had got pregnant yeah and um they were looking for a replacement and so I sent off for the job and I got shortlisted so I've been up to uh Newcastle for an interview um tiny 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 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 oh they were filling in for paulie yates um anyway it was interesting it was an interesting journey and then i had to return back to art school for 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 um in this in the holidays i'd gone to womad festival to see susie and the banshees and and took some took some really strong drugs I took a micro dot, which is much stronger than LSD.

36:39And 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 uh 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're all talking to me and uh yeah i went on this trip and uh 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 it was the check that was the thing that did it taking acid you serious 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 um their their spaces you know like you get a little 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 uh this giant room with a door on it that was like the size of this maybe a bit bigger than that and uh and they said well we've got this space here and it's got a door with a lock on it I said that would do so I had this I had this 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 around i just locked the door switch off the music and pretend i wasn't in so i didn't have any tutorials yeah 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 um find it working with found objects I mean pretty much immediately because when you were at art school they had like a 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 go in and you have to sign your little thingy and like get you 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 a lump of clay and so tim and i just went out and got shopping trolleys and used just 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 braise and um 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 a Americana and custom cars, customization and stuff.

40:16I don't know if it has 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've got neon lights underneath them and they've been pumped up and they're, you know, they were like, and they 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. It was almost like they'd breakdance. Yeah. You know, we'd go to Santa Pod and I just got, and they'd chrome the engine.

40:51I 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 scrapyards that had old 50s and 60s fridges and cookers and then customise them with exhaust pipes and make these 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 round art galleries by his artist parents. And so he was very much influenced by the work of Jean Tingley. And so he got into making things that moved, kinetic sculpture, if you like.

41:34So his degree show was very much about kinetics. and taxidermy um he'd make things fly uh crows fly and things and i would make i was very much into flashing lights and uh 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 uh what we can do next somebody came that uh was starting out a um 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 doing set, building stuff for stage sets, pop videos and whatever like that.

42:22We 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, well, let's go down and see it. So we traveled down from Bradford to London to the Sarcher 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 it.

43:04it 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 you could anything could be art there was like what you're doing painting bloody pictures and putting them on the wall you it was like the possibility there was endless possibilities of what art could be then because 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 uh 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 I need to go down and uh and see what this is 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 Hillgate 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 that's applied to go to do an MA and so we applied separately we made separate bodies of work and uh Tim got an in I didn't get an interview he did he got an interview at the Royal College of Art and they and they gave him a place at uh doing sculpture at the Royal College of Art and so for me I didn't care I just thought brilliant got free studio now in central london and uh subsidized accommodation so we found us that was a flat um that was subsidized in a block of flats in above clapham south tube station tiny thing and we we gave up the bedroom made um and lived in one room and made the bedroom into a studio tiny studio and uh and then tim yeah he enrolled at uh sculpture schools in battersea and I just thought well I'm not going to sit at home all day so give me a give me a card you can tap on the door to get in and I just invited myself up to Kensington Gore the Royal College of Art while he was in Battersea and I just used the pass and then I just went in really and just started wandering around the art departments using all the facilities you start working there yeah for two years and uh did anyone question you on that no not really i got a pass and it wasn't until and i even got a job in the uh in the art shop as well selling art materials and i used to print t-shirts in the printing department selling them in the art shop and a few people got wind of it even got invited onto a a school trip from the printmaking department to go to new york and said tim do you want to come with me i've been invited to go to New York with the printmaking department.

46:36And 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. 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 Adjaye in Shoreditch. And people will know this building because it's a very prominent, well-known building on Chance Street.

47:19And 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 first of all it's not painted black so it's a very dark brown right Ghanian brown okay David wanted to paint it yellow like sand yeah and I was like I'm not going to live in a bloody yellow house mate um so he said well we'll paint it this it was like gucci brown yeah it's very black brown though yeah yeah yeah well that all the copycat houses in all the copycat buildings in short it's black yeah get it it's actually a really really dark shade of brown yeah how did that come about well fast forward a few years you know we we moved to london and then we started uh uh working together and uh we hit hit the right moment if you like where we were showing our work and we got picked up by galleries is 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 uh intricate uh abstract sculptures that when you shone a light on it they made self-portraits of me and tim yeah just just just just to put some color on that people that don't know yeah they're absolutely ingenious those but they're basically found objects aren't they that you assemble together yeah and then when you shine of light on them they project onto the wall an incredibly accurate depiction of usually of you and tim or yeah whatever it was mainly of me and tim yeah i mean uh collectors at the time started wanting us to do their portraits andy warhol style and uh we refused to do anyone's portrait other than the only other person we did was isabella blow oh did you yeah and that ended up in the national portrait gallery oh really so um the only other portrait that and we got asked by a lot of famous people.

49:17And 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, we made up of the things that, the stuff that you throw into a drawer, a broken pair of sunglasses 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 he's shown and we were really embarrassed by this thing because we didn't even know if it was art yeah so we were very shy of showing it and uh we before we had a gallery we had a space on Rivington Street in Shoreditch which was an old the old Darlene Ackroyd office actually and we lived on the top floor and we had uh an office in the middle and a studio on the on the basement so we did our very first show in that building and uh 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 because 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 and 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 Sarchi moment Charles Sarchi 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 little shop if you like on Rivington Street and nobody came to Shoreditch in them days and a taxi pulled up with the engine still running it's like don't go because I'll never get a taxi back and it was Charles Sarchi walks in with his little daughter Phoebe and you know and we hid behind the wall we never even saw we never spoke to him and but there was a number to ring and 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 uh fast forward we met Stuart Shaver and started working with him where 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 on to that money and just pay us 60 quid a week because that's how much the doll was at the time we were signing on before we were making any money and so I said keep 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 uh it was for sale and it was like a derelict uh box it was a square box didn't have a pointy roof it was a flat box I love I just loved it and uh I think they wanted 500 ,000 pounds for it and I had in the bank a quarter of a million and I asked this this older man that I used to see at art openings I said how do 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 I said well I've got a 50 % deposit and so I went to my bank Lloyd's at the time High Street Bank and I said I've got this building I'm gonna buy it I've got half the money and they did the old computer says no.

52:58Tapped 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. I couldn't, you know, just, you know, it was, 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 won'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 Detmar can you lend me some money and he couldn't and uh because he got his money tied up and so he his sister his sister was married to a doctor who actually happened to have the amount of money that I needed and so I loaned it off him to buy that so we loaned the rest of the money to put with our money and uh 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 then we had to then we got a mortgage because i owned a property and it was and it was that building so how how did how did the house change things for you in terms of your work i mean the house inspired the work do you think well it just i always lived in fear of being kicked out yeah of rents going up or landlords you know and I just thought well just for security I just wanted to buy my own property yeah and there was not a lot of people doing that at the time uh 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 it was in partnership with will russell so it was ajay and russell i think they were working together and uh 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's had uh 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 around I said can you get rid of them pillars and he says oh yeah we'll just get the building and we'll pin it from the four corners and we'll get rid of the pillars I said great I'll buy the building that was that it was David I took David around so 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 as derelict but it was a massive fuck off space and we we were building our work in this derelict building um and we had we 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 it was we were just bankrolling it ourselves on the back of that show there's not much to it really um i mean david it's radical it looks completely radical we had nowhere to live so we had to apply for planned admission to build the penthouse on the top so we have this fuck off penthouse which was the size of the building it was huge yeah it's great the roof is lifted like a lid almost that's coming off the top yeah and it was very much like living in los angeles yeah although i'd never lived in los angeles that's what it felt like because all we could see was blue sky yeah because shoreditch was not built up like it is now yeah you looked off that balcony and you could see above what what what you know beyond what is now shoreditch high street overground and all those buildings that have been built since did you have a richard woods floor up there yeah so richard was woods was um uh also an artist working with stewart at the time and so we uh i think we did a deal with him to do the floor so it was a it was a custom made richard wood's floor yeah so you know once you got a bit of money i bought a gary hughan rug um yeah you just did it we did it gradually yeah it was a massive empty space it was all about the studio yeah the living space was very bare to start with yeah and then we bought furniture as we needed it how long how many years were you there for we moved in 2001 and i moved out in 2018 so i was there for just about 17 years okay wow that's a long time so that saw a lot that house and then And, you know, latterly, the two of you separated.

57:31Yeah. 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? 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.

58:06The car would be propped up on bricks. Literally, really, yeah. 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 you? I think just living and working together. I mean, we met 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 in the way. 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.

58:45And 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. You get a lot of groupies, did you? So art became massive. Yeah. 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.

59:23It just became really traumatic. Couldn't live with it. I remember throwing everything of his off the balcony.