'Woman reading a Possession Order', 1997
Transcript
There's a lot to talk about with this first project I did, which was based on this house in this street, this is where I've been living now for the last, over 15 years, I think, I've been living in this street.
I was a squatter here for about 10 or so of those years, and we were trying to save our community that we'd built up in Hackney. And the pictures that I did with my neighbours were part of a campaign to show that we were worthwhile members of society, and we shouldn't just be stamped on and evicted. So I wanted to show the squatters as worthy people in society, not just some who were talked about in the Hackney Gazette as scum of the earth and destroying our society.
So I went back and looked at the way other people have looked at groups in society and elevated their status.
And the Dutch painters of the 17th century were a group of painters who seemed to be elevating the whole standard of the Dutch people. So I thought that would be a nice way of taking on some of the compositional tools that the Dutch used in their painting, to promote my neighbourhood.
And I got more interested in one Dutch painter particularly, who was Vermeer. And just the way I worked, it just so happened that Vermeer worked in the very small town of Delft, and he dealt with a very small amount of people, and he only did a small amount of pictures, and he was totally obsessed by his small neighbourhood. Which is what I've become. I live in a small street, in a very small community, and I've become obsessed with my neighbourhood and my people around me.
