Warehouse Art

One of my first experiences of the Ouseburn was 'breaking in' to one of the derelict warehouses on Stepney Bank. Maybe we had permission, I can't really remember, in the late '90s a lot of people were using lockups in the Valley for parties and the legality always seemed a little hazy. We used our space to put on a photo-performance piece, where ten photographers ran around and stopped every ten seconds to take a shot of wherever they landed. The images were then put on the walls as a kind of broken narrative. I was timekeeper and rang the gong! The warehouse is gone now, it was demolished and for a while the old back wall with its graffiti formed the back of a temporary car park; then the Media Exchange build their office block on the site. And the group of artists who performed the piece are also long disbanded - some of us are working in the 'arts establishment' but I bet we all miss the days when we liked our art to trespass just a little bit...