My time at art school was very exciting. I had very good tutors. We'd go to France, we'd
go to Amsterdam, see all the Van Gogh's, see all the Monet's. We were travelling three
or four times a year to Europe. And you see all this amazing painting and you think, 'oh
well, I have to find my own niche in this world, what am I going to do?'
But I realised that you have to find something that really turns you on, something you really
can get your teeth into. That's when I started going to all the nightclubs in Hackney.
I thought, 'this is what I want to do!'
The drawings were made in the dark, I couldn't see what I was doing. You've got to feel as
if you're out there with the people, dancing and moving. It actually relates to the county
I'm from, Grenada in the West-Indies. It's more carnival orientated, Grenada. Less kind
of house-parties.
We're gonna get started. There we go, let's get the portfolio out.
These are most of my night-club drawings from the 80s. This is 'Jah Shaka' and this was
done to the length of a record, which is about three or four minutes in those days. I'd be
sitting at a table, at the back of the bar.
This is less of Jah Shaka and more of the crowd and you can see the speaker and the
heads, and these people, because it's very crowded, they'll be just rocking back and
forth to the bass.
This is a really freaky one of the nightclub. It's really going! Everything is in there.
More gesture, movement, action. And the more kind of selective concentration of individuals,
a guy toasting on the mic.
'Winston Rose'. This is related to Winston Rose, this is how he was carried to the police
van, handcuffed, with all the police surrounding him, with their foot on him, and the social
worker there. And basically he was dead now, really. Got no pals. And they took him to
the local nearest hospital. Yeah. I forgot I had that one. Yeah, so that's Winston Rose
in a police van.
I didn't decide to do anything with the police because I wanted to do something political.
It only came about because a guy who they killed, which was Winston Rose, he was a friend
of mine, because we lived in the same house in Hackney when I came to this country.
The police were pretty rough in those days.
I needed the thing about Winston Rose, my knowledge about him and his life and how he
got killed to spur me on, because I ended up doing about four or five years of police
paintings.
'Three Wicked Men' came about became of all the studies I did for Winston Rose. That's
the dread in the middle, the central character. The dread could be the businessman. The policeman.
And the politician. This is a street dealer, probably going to get his stuff. This character
I used a lot, I really love this character, because a lot of the rasta blokes, they used
to walk around, and they have a certain walk that they do you see. They'll bend one leg.
They used to do things like the monkey-dance. Because they used to watch a lot of Bruce
Lee films in Jamaica.
So this figure is dressed almost like in a pyjama, and some people at the nightclubs,
they'd come so interestingly dressed up, they'd like as if they were a king from Africa.
This figure here with the big hair and the yellow, it's almost like an angel, I've tried
to evoke like a wing. Really, this is about Winston Rose. Although he's like a dread-rasta,
with his ghetto-blaster, that figure is basically an angel coming to rescue Winston Rose.
You don't realise that you've been dealing with the darker aspects of life, and you're
sort of going into it, believing and full vigour and spirit and whatever. But then the
other side of my work, which is more people enjoying being at the nightclub, dancing and
stuff, I wouldn't say they're more kind of lighter, sunnier, but they're not to do with
death and stuff like that, which I suppose the burial was to do with, and the 'Three
Wicked Men' came about because of someone dying in police custody.