'I will always love London even though it has gone through many transformations since 1983, when I moved here. I first lived in a hostel in Queensgate in South Kensington, an area that was out of reach financially, but one I dreamt of living in without the hostel environment.
'My perspective has changed now and I could never live there. That's the great thing about London, it is like so many different towns in one city and it takes a long time to know where you belong. East London is where I find myself at last feeling at home, after 15 years of living in the west, south and north of the city.
'London is one of the least judgmental cities. Having been a punk and New Romantic growing up in Birmingham I always sensed some kind of disapproval, which disappeared when I moved to London. Perhaps it's the fact that no one really owns it and therefore cannot exclude you.
'If I think of the grim accommodation I lived in for the first ten years, I realise how committed I was to loving London. It is a place that has afforded me opportunity; I got jobs in London when no one offered me an interview in Birmingham. I also got into art school without any real signs of talent, just rough sketchbooks.
'East London still feels like a place that allows the organic to grow. It's full of makeshift bars and shops that are not chain stores and hardly look like shops from the outside. This is what I feel London does best. It keeps a slight punk aesthetic, the do-it-yourself look.'
