Beginnings: Derek Jarman’s Bankside | Little White Lies

Beginnings

Begin­nings: Derek Jarman’s Bankside

25 Oct 2020

Words by Adam Scovell

Dilapidated building with balconies against a blue sky with some birds flying.
Dilapidated building with balconies against a blue sky with some birds flying.
Vis­it­ing the site near South­wark Bridge in Lon­don where the late artist’s film­mak­ing career began.

Derek Jar­man was a wan­der­er. Though he was asso­ci­at­ed with a num­ber of places and build­ings, in par­tic­u­lar the famous Prospect Cot­tage in Dun­ge­ness with its equal­ly cel­e­brat­ed gar­den, it was real­ly ill­ness that ground­ed this rad­i­cal film­mak­er, writer and artist on the shing­ly coast.

Before then, Jar­man had made his way through a shab­by, derelict Lon­don, often using it as a back­drop for his rad­i­cal rein­ven­tion of British cin­e­ma. He doc­u­ment­ed many unique places through­out the 1960s and 70s before the accel­er­a­tion of rede­vel­op­ment and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion took over in the 80s and became the dom­i­nant mod­el for urban space in the capital.

Jar­man was born 31 Jan­u­ary, 1942 in North­wood, which then strad­dled greater Lon­don and the coun­ty of Mid­dle­sex. His father, Lancelot Elwor­thy Jar­man, was an offi­cer in the Roy­al Air Force mean­ing that he and his wife Eliz­a­beth trav­elled a great deal. They spent time liv­ing var­i­ous­ly in a range of places from Italy to Pak­istan. He went to sev­er­al schools, includ­ing the Can­ford Board­ing School, but final­ly moved to Lon­don in the ear­ly 1960s when he began his stud­ies at Kings’ Col­lege. Set­tled is per­haps the wrong word to use, for Jar­man was a man who nev­er real­ly set­tled any­where until the mid 1980s when he final­ly found solace in the land­scapes of Dungeness.

Like his drift­ing child­hood life, Jarman’s rela­tion­ship to Lon­don was one that was equal­ly in flux. One of his more inter­est­ing projects, one that seemed uncon­scious­ly under­tak­en on his part, was his explo­ration and organ­ic reju­ve­na­tion of old indus­tri­al spaces, espe­cial­ly those that ran along­side the Thames. In the late 60s, he moved into a crum­bling South Bank house with the artists Peter Logan and Tony Fry.

The pair­ing with Peter Logan was to prove piv­otal to both Jarman’s future work spaces and the gen­er­al under­ground arts scene that was to blos­som by the riv­er in the fol­low­ing decade. Soon he began his jour­ney fol­low­ing the water, liv­ing at 51 Upper Ground with Logan and his sculp­tor broth­er Andrew. The par­ties were leg­endary though not to last as the build­ing was soon demol­ished to make way for the South Bank Tower.

Tall brick building with blue sky, visible balconies.

Bank­side was Jarman’s next stop by South­wark Bridge. It was an impor­tant place for Jarman’s work, part­ly because it was the sub­ject of one his ear­li­est Super‑8 films but also because it was famous for its gath­er­ings increas­ing­ly cen­tred on film screen­ings. The room on the top floor became known for hous­ing the director’s bed in a green house, set up to keep the occu­pants warm in the cold­er months.

Bank­side real­ly wit­nessed the birth of Jarman’s film­mak­ing. He even filmed his final wan­der through the place, sim­ply titled One last walk, One last look, Bank­side 1971’, when the build­ing again found itself under the aus­pices of devel­op­ers. It would be this move that saw him final­ly set­tle for a time in Block A of Butler’s Wharf.

The area was desert­ed since the docks had been moved fur­ther down the riv­er”, he wrote, return­ing home late at night down these emp­ty streets you felt the city belonged to you.” For a time it did, for the wharf was utter­ly derelict. Artists soon flocked to the new co-oper­a­tives cre­at­ed in the var­i­ous spaces of the wharf, inde­pen­dent artist-led organ­i­sa­tions that lived and worked around the spaces, cre­at­ing new rad­i­cal alter­na­tives to the more typ­i­cal gallery spaces; arts of all sorts fill­ing in the post-indus­tri­al shells with relish.

The space even act­ed as a set of sorts. The waste ground out­side was used for film­ing what would become the fea­ture-length project In the Shad­ow of the Sun, even­tu­al­ly released in 1981 but cut togeth­er using super‑8 footage filmed there in the ear­ly 1970s and sound­tracked by Throb­bing Gristle.

Jar­man would remain in the block until the late 1970s when the devel­op­ers again con­tin­ued their march along the Thames and began turn­ing the build­ing into anoth­er of their typ­i­cal lux­u­ry pads and offices. Not con­tent to leave in total peace, Jar­man used the area in anoth­er of his projects: the pro­to-punk satire Jubilee. If he was going to leave the space to the social­ly mobile, he was at least going to imbue it with mem­o­ries of punk anar­chists and extreme vio­lence unfold­ing around St Sav­iours Dock.

On 19 Feb­ru­ary, 2019, 25 years after Jarman’s pass­ing, a plaque was unveiled at Butler’s Wharf on the build­ing that housed Jarman’s vast floor stu­dio. In real­i­ty, the stu­dio was much high­er up on the third floor, boast­ing envi­ous but ulti­mate­ly depress­ing views of the beau­ti­ful riv­er and the sur­round­ing build­ings as they were grad­u­al­ly remould­ed for financiers.

Walk­ing around the area today, it’s unwise to con­sid­er how much a flat in the build­ing would cost, nev­er mind one that was the same size as Jarman’s stu­dio. In many ways, the area feels iron­i­cal­ly stuck in its own Thatcherite time-warp. It still retains that first bland flavour of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion accel­er­at­ed by Mar­garet Thatcher’s pre­mier­ship, the even­tu­al coloni­sa­tion of spaces like Butler’s Wharf by social­ly climb­ing finance work­ers and busi­ness­es cater­ing to their tastes.

The plaque resides as a last rebel­lious rel­ic, one that cel­e­brates a time when there was still afford­able space for artists of all kinds in the cen­tre of the city, from rogue sculp­tors to pagan punks.

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