How Things Started

Born in 1970’s London to Scottish Irish parents Ruth Pollock and Angus Ramage Gilmour. I grew up with my young single mum post her arts school years in constructed Textiles and a journey to London for my dad’s work opportunities as a young architect made before my parents split up. We moved in a two room flat above a Bloomsbury post office after a brief spell in a bed and breakfast, a shared single bed and a suitcase of things; sleeping in the kitchen painted dark 70’s purple with matching aubergine painted furniture, a small low kitchen table where we sat on floor cushions, she slept in the pale pink living room next door, we shared a bathroom with the flat along the corridor. She made my clothes, made my toys and bought everything else secondhand. My dad appearing occasionally from working thousands of miles away in the Middle East and Africa, taking me to the iconic original Rocky Horror Show in an old Cinema in The Kings Road and Hiawatha at The Round House. My mum a massive jazz fan taking me to Sunday jazz clubs and Duke Ellington’s memorial in All Souls Church, black and white movies at the BFI.

Once a year going overseas to see my dad for the Easter Holidays, Beirut, Cairo, a small 1970’s Philips orange transistor radio for my Easter birthday, climbing up the pyramids. The first taste of the travel bug that would become an intrinsic part of my DNA.

Mum and I lived in those two rooms until the ceiling collapsed on us one night, unharmed we were rehoused in a council flat in Fitzrovia under the looming Brutalist Post Office Tower, sharing a launderette on Maple Street with Boy George and Marilyn, buying me striped T shirts from the Legendary Biba Store in High Street Kensington, Soho our local haunt for coffee at Bar Italia. Her always drawing, me an occasional reluctant model, now the owner of these precious drawings. There was no money but there was the immense privilege of living in the absolute centre of one of the world’s richest cities.

She took me to Museums and Art Galleries, the V&A, Royal Academy, Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, criss crossing London always on foot, 70’s and early 80’s London bleak but energised. The striking Miners marching the Streets to the beat of their drums, the burnt out cars on Tottenham Court Road of the Poll tax riots but equally  lifted by the frenetic energy of Eduardo Paolozzi’s new Tottenham Court Road glass Murals, punk life in Camden and in contrast the peace and tranquility of Regents Park.

Holidays were spent in Edinburgh with both sets of grandparents , my mums Northern Irish and my dads from the Glasgow now living in Portobello. Both sets radical socialists in their youth. My mums mother a painter of tiny square paintings of Colraine, Northern Ireland which she gave away to raise money for cancer research, her dad an English Teacher who kept a pet bat. My Dads father a retired Labour Town Councillor and a writer of pamphlets.

I went to primary school in Hampstead on the 24 bus because a friends kid went there, a secondary school in Chalk Farm because it was the only non boys Camden school with a space left, walking through Regents Park every morning to get there; A school that became a hotbed for budding Labour Politicians. Buying myself vintage Hawaiian shirts and fake converse high tops from Flip on long acre, pulling 1950’s chairs out of skips as they made way for 80’s replacements, buying rockabilly records from jumble sales and in the mid 80’s going to the end of year Central St Martins Fashion Shows with their nudity, transgressive ideas and riotous atmosphere. Eventually when the mid teen age years came round sneaking into The Mud Club and The Astoria underage in black mini skirts and MA1 jackets from Kensington Market, persuaded by my much cooler best friend.A first experience of The National Theatre for Richard Eyre’s Guys and Dolls, tickets from a friend of my mums who was a dresser. A final School trip to Gorbachov’s Russia for a perspective shift.

At sixteen I started working at Neal Street East for Christina Smith (one of the early founders of transforming Covent Garden from a working Industrial Market to what it is now) an Eastern Emporium in an old Covent Garden Fruit warehouse. I worked there for 8 years through School, Exams and Art College at Wimbledon School of Art meeting incredible artists like Derek Jarman who graced its doors.

It was a rich London Life, raves at Bagleys warehouse, Soul to Soul Sound systems, early Chemical Brothers gigs at The Albany, Madam Jojo’s in Soho, Acid Jazz nights at Dingwalls, sticky floors of the Electric Ballroom and clothes from the original Red or Dead in Camden Lock. Michael Clark and Leigh Bowery performances at Sadlers wells and Bagleys Studios. Further afield Robert Wilson and Robert Le page at The Edinburgh International Festival in the holidays.

Neal Street East paid me through College and kept me going through the first couple of years out in the world of work where mostly Theatre work was done for free or a token payment living with my dad during this period back in London and in his council flat in King Cross. Shows in swimming pools, basements and above pubs, assisting one of my tutors Jacqui Gunn in a canal side warehouse, meeting great east London designers, Simon Costin and Simon Vincenzi, lighting designer Chahine Yavrayon, who felt like artistic mentors, an artistic practice to strive for, work that was political, intellectual, immersive and poetic. A three month trip to India to once again have my world view shifted by the intense sensorial experience of sound , smell, taste and heat of Bombay, Delhi, Dharmsala and Ladakh.

The big break came about 5 years into working after writing a letter to Mick Gordon the then artistic director of The Gate, the ultimate in 90’s cool above a pub. It began a period working there that covered three artistic directors and 8 shows, plays from young international playwrights with Erica Whyman, a wild version of the Musical Hair with American Director Daniel Kramer. Projects that gave a shop window for my work and sustained me artistically if not financially over a period of 7 years. It seems to me every work opportunity that came next was born from that period of work at the Gate and so I will always be grateful to Mick for what he saw in me, perhaps drawn together from Northern Irish roots. Opportunities for site specific projects at The National, musicals at The Donmar, RSC new writing at Wilton’s Musical Hall, meeting Jamie Lloyd. Interesting London spaces, challenging briefs and new relationships that defined a framework for my career going forward.

At the centre of everything that happened next was London and perhaps even more specifically Camden as home and work place but always fuelled by the wanderlust of travel , Paris, New York, Venice, Berlin, Tokyo, Stockholm, Barcelona, Quebec, Philadelphia, Buenos Aires , Lisbon.