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Easte rn bl o c Since the late 1980s, Hoxton and have led the way in making and consuming art in the context of a new contemporary culture – and the original East End pioneers have watched it all happen on their doorstep. By Michael Bracewell

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n the eastern fringes of the City of London,the streets and or their fondness for Prêt à Manger sandwiches. A new breed of citizen squares of Hoxton and Shoreditch spread out like a grey ho m e o wner who would want the cosmetic glamour of living in an Odelta – a last dense matting of the urban fabric, cut through ‘e d g y ’ urban distric t , but who also required the newly arriv ed servi c e s with choked arterial roads. of insulation and lifestyle support, a good Merlot by the glass and a For James Mason, our glamorous guide to The London Nobody sh o wroom of mid-century furni t u r e . And who could blame them? Kn ow s in Norman Cohen’s 1966 cinema adaptation of Geoffrey Ar tists had been setting up studios and finding flats in the cheaper Fl e t c h e r ’ s book of the same name, the streets and markets of the old East End throughout the 1980s, although even then propert y East End were a thriv i n g , exuberant place. Ma s o n , dressed in twee d de ve l o p e r s had an eye on the distric t . There had been the art i s t s ’s c e n e sp o r ts jacket and matching cap, threads his way through the bus y around Beck Road and a few warehouse parti e s . But it was subsequent cr o wds with the air of a gentleman touri s t .‘ S o rry to have bumped you to the pan-media resonance of Damien Hirst ’ s ‘ F r e e z e ’e x h i b i t i o n ,h e l d si r ! ’ he announces to a man he has just inadver tently jostled, and give s at the Por t of London Au t h o r ity building in 1988, th a t the adopted a courteous little tap to the peak of his cap. home of contemporary art within Britain – the ver y HQ of what was But there is a darker side.The imagery of the film intercuts between called ‘Y oung British A rt ’ – would spread to the once mean streets of shots of basins of live eels, vagrant alcoholics and the tombstones in a Ho xton and Shoreditch.Where formerly were tool-cutters ,j o i n e rs and local churchyard. Mason pays a visit to a house in Fournier Street, pr int wor k s , the white-hot furnace of funky, ne o - g runge attitude began too, where he is shown – by a respectful housewife – the spot where its imperial phase as the principal energy source within the cultural one of ’s victims supposedly bled to death.Ruins and la n d s c a p e . Before you could say ‘Boho Dance’, the notion of a new dereliction sit side by side with daily struggle. bohemianism – young artists attracting haut bourgeo i s pat r o n a g e , as Cohen’s feature-length documentary – the tone and sensibility of classically defined by Tom Wolfe in his extended essay of 1975 ‘T h e which were recently reclaimed by the pop group Saint Etienne,whose Painted Wor d ’ – was in place around Hoxton Square, Rivington Street, richly atmospheric new film Finisterre is a similarly strange and poetic Charlotte Road and Commercial Street; and could be found in its homage to London at a time of major transition – can be seen now as wildest contorti o n s , in fact, pretty much anywhere between Liverp o o l a last meditation on a dying world.The film shows streets and people St r e e t , Old Street, Br ick Lane and High Street. little changed since Nigel Henderson photographed them back in the The principal event to mark this shift was ‘A Fête Wor se Th a n late 1940s. There is the same sense of being fingertip-to-fingertip De at h ’ , organised in Hoxton Square in 1994 by the late Jos h u a with the London of Charles Dickens, and with a brooding and Co m p t o n , under the auspices of his one-man organisati o n , Fac t u a l mysterious place that still has an air of being its own republic. No n s e n s e , based in Charlotte Road. The ‘Fête Wor se Than Death ’ was This would be a London that few people knew, until the beginning im p o r tant because it not only brought together many of the new names of the last decade. For even in the 1980s the streets and squares of in contemporary art – Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers took Hoxton and Shoreditch felt like London’s Wild Wood: labyrinthine pa r t – but it did so in a way which came to the attention of the broader and slightly threatening, not welcoming of strangers and bound by an cultural media. Suddenly there was a scene. And the appearance of the etiquette and rules known only to its inhabitants. la te Leigh Bowe ry ’s eccentric ‘pop gro u p ’ , Minty – a performance in At once poetic and somewhat forlorn,the proximity of a historically which Bower y mimed giving birth to his wife through the ripped gusset p o o r , densely multicultural, working-class district to London’s of his tights – assured the necessary little sprinkle of ‘shock factor’. financial centre has bred an atmosphere of particular intensity.There By the end of the 1990s the ver y power bases of the Brit i s h is the sense, to reprise Virginia Woolf’s gloriously me l o d r a m at i c co n t e m p o r a r y art scene – the wea l t h y priv ate galleries representing the p h r a s e ,t h at one is ‘a r riving at the ver y jaws of Wh i t e c h a p e l ’ – that one big new art stars – were taking up residence within this new bohemia. has crossed the width of a street and exchanged the soft-lapelled St u a r t Shave and Detmar Blow set up Modern Ar t Inc in Redchurch opulence of banking for a breeding ground of bohemianism. St r e e t ; Jay Jop l i n g ’ s White Cube, en t e r ing a spectacularly successful In its relation to contemporary art and visual culture, the recent phase in its existence, occupied the old Duckwor th publishing bui l d i n g hi s t o r y of the East End is complex and intrig u i n g . More than any other on Hoxton Square; ev en one of the principal dealers on Cork Street, cultural manifestation of the last decade, the district came to represent Vi c t o r ia Miro, established a new East End headquarte r s. These old you t h , newness and regenerati o n . For just as contemporary architecture streets had become, to borro w further from Wol f e , the latest outpost of throughout the 1980s became the signifier of fashionable moderni t y , so ‘C u l t u r e b e r g ’ , with the food chains of wealth reaching out and down , co n t e m p o r a r y art throughout the 1990s would be seen as the ultimate as it wer e , to where the art was ‘wa r m and wet from the loft’. refinement of the Zeitgeist. The dereliction of inner cities – post- This represented an enormous geographical shift in the art wor l d ’ s in d u s t r ial areas, no w depriv ed of their industry – was colonised across perception of itself. By 1990 there were plenty of people who could the country by enterpr ises of new visual culture. Ar t came to be seen as remember a time not so long ago, sa y in the mid-1980s, when you a catalyst of regenerati o n . And the model was always Hoxt o n . co u l d n ’ t have held a major priv ate view for an artist anywhere further In fact, to the social anthropologists at work in adver tising agencies east than Bond Street.But more importantly, the move east marked a and market research offices, the word ‘H ox t o n ’ became both noun and sudden gear change in the attitudes to making art of the new ad j e c t i ve . This old London district was the latest semiotic shorthand to generation of artists – many of whom were graduates from either denote what trend analysts have officially described as ‘urban edgy’ – Goldsmiths College or the Royal College of Art. meaning the new, m o n i e d , inner-city consumers for whom a There is the story of a critic who was writing reviews for a leading art kn o wledge of contemporary art would be right up there with th e i r magazine towards the end of the 1980s and who had first - h a n d Above: Gilbert &George, Eight Hang-Outs, 2003, 282 x 252 cm as p i r a tions for a Thameside loft apartment and a holiday in a hip hotel ex p e r ience of the reality of this gear change. A group show of you n g 4 Preceding page: Forty Locations, 2003, 282 x 336 cm

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3ar tists was due to open in a temporarily rented space near to time – and with the exception of the changing ethnic communities Sh o r e d i t c h . In those days this was newly fashionable and seemed to this was still ver y much ‘the London nobody know s ’ .G i l b e rt & George represent an exuberant independence from the elitism of grand priv ate ha ve been resident in E1 since 1965, when George moved to their old ga l l e r ies in the West End. Ev en so, to a critic it could seem like a bit of studio in Wilkes Street, and their ceremonial house in Fou r nier Street a trek – way out there beyond the Barbican Centre. And so he rang one has now become an interna tional icon of contemporary culture. of the artists to see if he could come down to the show in the afterno o n Gilbert & George had been attracted to the East End not simply by before the evening priv ate view.‘Er… no,’ came the abrupt reply. ‘W hy ? the affordability of property – much of it formerly industrial, or Are you still hanging the show ? ’‘ N o.We’ re still making the wor k . ’ almost wholly derelict – but also by the need to declare a barrier of The ver y idea of such high-speed, DI Y , hi t - a n d - r un art- m a k i n g sensibility between themselves and the prevailing cultural climate.As was a total rever sal of what had been the prevailing fashion in students at Saint Martins School of Art in the mid-1960s, they had co n t e m p o r a r y art: the intensely romantic, densely literary and neo- developed a way of considering and making art that was utterly at expressionist paintings of the ‘New Image Glasgow’ school of painters. odds with the ideologies and ambitions – and even the appearance – To many pundits the new East End ver sion of contemporary art was of their tutors and peers. They wanted to make an art that spoke seen as a miniatu r ised ver sion of punk rock’s cultural revol u t i o n : an directly to the broadest possible number of people.As such,they have ove rt u rning of the old established order by you n g , fa s t , sh a r p and created a body of work in which their locality – London, E1 – shocking arti s t s . But what would be more impressive still was the sheer becomes universal and articulates the feelings of being in any city on speed with which this snappy young scene entered into a bus i n e s s the planet,from Chicago to Beijing. re l a tionship with galleries that were ever y bit as expensive and elite as Vitally, Gilbert & George have endlessly refined their art,in such a their older colleagues over in the West End. way that it describes the most intense relationship between the city In fact,the cultural uptake of the Hoxton scene – as a highly potent and mortality. Their new work, ‘The London E1 Pictures’, sets the image of newness,hipness and fashionability – by the mainstream of identification of specific ‘Streets’, ‘Locations’, ‘Haunts’ and ‘Hang- not only the art establishment but also the worlds of media, Outs’ within that particular postcode against images of Gilbert & advertising, fashion,design and property development was one of the George representing ages of man:normal,disturbed and dead.These fastest on record. Ultimately, the significance of the East End art pictures extend and update the political journalism of Charles scene would lie in its role as a cultural catalyst, as an indicator of Dickens,in which Boz described the ages of man within the London necessary change, reflecting the much deeper and more important parish system.We see,too, Gilbert & George beginning to haunt their issues of how you might make and consume art in the new context of streets in ghost-like form,articulating the shared experience of many contemporary culture. What was the art for the fast, cynical new city-dwellers as they get older,for whom the streets they are walking world? This was the business of the new East End art scene. begin to seem like the chapters of their autobiography – they are The idea that the East End could provide a kind of ideologic a l revisiting scenes of their own past. backdrop of tough, st r e e t w i s e , neo-punk attitudes for this late s t Gilbert & George,like T S Eliot’s Tiresian seer in The Waste Land, ‘c e n a c l e ’ of young artists was as crucial to their public image as it was have watched the flux and change of the city’s life beyond their front to their actual practice. By 1997, when the ‘L i v estock Market’ art i s t s ’ door. As the properties around their home have become hugely street fair was held in Rivington Street, EC 2 , Tim Noble and Sue expensive and the chic restaurants and bars have begun to attract a Web s t e r ’ s ‘t a ttoo parlour’ stall cheekily sold the art world its image of mixture of Hoxtonite bohemians and young City workers,they have itself as ‘urban edgy’. As David Barrett wrote of the event in his essay observed the parallel rise of religious and political fundamentalism, ‘H o w to be a Young British Ar tist for fun and profit’: ‘W ell-bred gallery from Islam to anarchy, in the same streets. Hence their justifiable girls had “ B I T C H ”s c r awled on their bodies.Young artists finally had claim that all human life – from advanced capitalism to preparations the hard-core tattoo they’d always wan t e d , and they strutted up and for holy war – can be observed on the streets of E1. do wn Charlotte Road like a bad actor doing the LA Bloods. But it was One imagines that the East End,as observed by Gilbert & George, a hot day and the inks ran in the heat. Then ever yone started to wor ry will maintain its ancient,historical progress as a place in the shadow th a t the colours would stain their agnès b cardie or Carhartt jeans…’ of the City’s tremendous wealth, but where the shifts of fashion will So who were the real pioneers of this landscape? Who had braved be of less importance than an old, underlying sense of tension. De s p i t e rid i c u l e , flying fists and outside lavato r ies long before Hoxton had a the flashy restaurants and the young galleries,Shoreditch and Hoxton boutique bistro on ever y street corner? In the 1960s and 1970s there had to this day maintain their somewhat derelict,elegiac air.Two minutes been a few significant settlers in both the East End and the ea s t e r n and from White Cube you can be walking streets which have a sadness so u t h e r n Thameside distric t s . The Whitechapel had been hosting vital and obscurity that will survive even the rise in property prices. At the exhibitions of modern art since the 1950s, with such landmark shows same time,the art world is rumoured to be planning its next move:to as ‘This Is To m o rr ow ’d e f i n i n g contemporary art ’ s relation to the new either the coastal towns of Essex, where the Hoxton formula of art’s pop world of mass media. Li k e w i s e , in 1968 the ‘Anti Univers i t y ’ was regeneration of depressed areas can be repeated;or back to the West founded in Shoreditch in an attempt to maintain the spirit of the End and the old haunts of old money. student riots in Pari s . A new revol u t i o n a r y curriculum was established with pivotal figures such as R D Laing and Yoko Ono as teachers. Gilbert & George, 5 June-31 July, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 75003 It is difficult to imagine now just how remote the Paris (+33 1 42 72 99 00,www.ropac.net);‘East End Academy’,11 June- must have seemed in the late 1960s. The streets were dangerous – the 29 Aug, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London E1 (+44 (0)20 7522 7880, Above: Thirty-Five Locations, 2003, 336 x 423 cm Na tional Front committed arson attacks on the local buildings from ti m e www.whitechapel.org) Preceding page: Twenty-Three Hang-Outs, 2003, 221.5 x 336 cm

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