In The Studio-John Monks

Discover how the Manchester artist’s paint-splattered studio inspired his latest exhibition.

- Steve Pill

How long have you been in this studio?

We’ve been here 30 years. When we first came, it was an engineering workshop and nobody actually lived here. What is now the house downstairs was just a space to keep carts, it was like something out of the Edwardian period.

This is a desirable bit of London. Was it when you moved?

No, about five years prior to me coming, they were going to demolish the whole area as slum clearance. You can’t imagine it. People got together and got it changed to a conservation area. Clapham at the time was completely dead. Then there was a stage when everybody else had moved out and it was just me and it was just derelict really.

What initially appealed about the space?

Well, when I’d left the Royal College of Art as a student, I’d worked in a squat on Wandsworth Road and then in a factory. It got closed and we got kicked out. I had to find somewhere, and I looked all over London. It had snowed when I walked down the street here and I could see there were no footsteps in the snow on the steps up to the studio. I thought maybe they weren’t using it.

That’s good detective work!