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New Statesman
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Gardening, grief and memory
There's a poignant horticultural adage that a garden looks best a year after its custodian dies. I heard it again recently, from the landscape designer Sarah Price, in her dreamy garden in Abergavenny, Wales. She would know: she first encountered the garden as a child, when it belonged to her grandparents, and now her own children play in its tunnels and streams (it really is the stuff of a fairy tale). It is a garden of succession. Very few of us grow on previously untouched land, but there is a particular potency in tending to gardens that have been made or looked after by our loved ones. It's a theme that runs through Nova Scotia House, the debut novel from the British author and fashion journalist Charlie Porter. Porter's slim but potent love story is told from the internal perspective of Johnny, a man in his late forties who is still living in the London home – and garden – of his lover Jerry, who died during the Aids crisis. They met planting tulips when Johnny, then 19, volunteered at 45-year-old painter Jerry's community gardens. Their deeply loving partnership occupied the last four years of Jerry's life. A quarter of a century later, Johnny is still living in Jerry's council flat, growing the produce that once sustained Jerry. Gardening, along with walking and sex, is among the physical, repetitive acts that demarcate time, process and grief in the book. The garden – which is 'south-west long length' and subject to sun 'pretty much all day long' – acts as the novel's metronome. In the first pages, we learn that a tower of luxury flats is being built at the end of it. They will block the light that helped Jerry's plants grow and paintings emerge. Johnny will no longer be able to grow the food that he lives off: 'I don't want to leave I will have to leave I can't leave. Can I stay here why stay here. I don't want to think about it now. I don't want to think. What can I do.' Jerry, and as a result, Johnny, live in social housing. In the era that Jerry was offered a council house, queer people were given homes by the state in particularly run-down estates. Before then, Jerry lived in warehouses and in counter-cultural communal set-ups. The garden is imbued with a similar radicalism: not as something to be admired for its beauty, but as a means of survival in a world where little was done about the deaths of so many young men. Porter's novel is a pleasing celebration of how gardening, queer lives and the Aids crisis intertwined. Much of modern garden design is informed by the work of the New Perennial or Dutch Wave movement of the Seventies, which sought to replicate the patterns and habits of nature more closely in the garden, including an awareness of and respect for what plants looked like in death. Henk Gerritsen, who was the founding member of the Dutch Wave, lived with HIV until his death in 2008, but his partner, Anton Schlepers, had died in the Nineties during the Aids epidemic. 'People used to be so afraid of death in the garden,' Gerritsen once told the writer and garden designer Noel Kingsbury. 'Every yellow leaf was an imperfection, and had to be taken out… but now a whole generation has known death, so we do not ban it from the garden any more.' Porter has said that he was inspired by the relationship between the film-maker and artist Derek Jarman and the actor Keith Collins, who was two decades Jaman's junior. Collins went on to tend the garden Jarman made in his final years, in the shingle cottage on the coast of Dungeness. Prospect Cottage, once belonging to the Jarman and left to Collins after his death, was acquired in 2020 by the Art Fund to protect it and its contents for the future. Its garden is now looked after by the gardener and plantsman Jonny Bruce, who brings in groups of volunteers to help with maintenance and planting. In Nova Scotia House, Jerry's friends hope to remember him with a quilt panel that depicts 'a garden but somehow make it the wildest party'. It's an ambitious vision, but I wonder if these gatherings might come close. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See more: If I could be a tree, I'd be a sycamore] Related
The Guardian
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter review – a headlong rush through the turbulent Aids era
The humble comma, normally so easily overlooked within a page of text, is clearly Charlie Porter's weapon of choice for his debut novel. Here, he wields it to propel his narrative forward in the kind of urgent, endless staccato rush that sometimes requires the reader to look briefly up and away, if only to gulp at some fresh air. Nova Scotia House, the 51-year-old journalist's first work of fiction after two books on fashion, tells the story of living through the Aids crisis of the 1980s and early 90s, and how those who survived it will be forever accompanied by the ghostly presence of those who didn't. Johnny is 19 years old when he meets Jerry, 45, the older, wiser guide who introduces his young charge to London, the gay scene, and a sense of community – a queer community – he has long sought. In his first nightclub, for example, Johnny experiences 'people more people, noise like I had not known it, a hard wall, relentless, so many bodies, light mostly red, smoke steaming from bodies, smoke from cigarettes, chemical smoke in the air, Jerry grinning maniacal, in my ear he said, follow me, and Jerry took my hand…' Jerry, Johnny says, 'was the first man I loved, the first man I loved who died. If we normalise Jerry's death, we eradicate Jerry. If we normalise the nightmare of HIV, we eradicate its victims.' Porter tells Johnny's story from the sober – and mostly sad – vantage point of 30 years later. He continues to live in Jerry's flat, No 1, Nova Scotia House, not merely out of sentiment but because he never quite got his act together enough to leave, and move on. We don't learn what it is he does for a living, but are instead given the sense that life is passing him by, and that most of his connections now come via dispiriting hookups found on his phone. 'Will I see anyone. Don't care. Sounds rude, it's not rude.' Mostly, he pines for something deeper, but this he feels is impossible in a city ravaged by redevelopment, obliterating existing neighbourhoods and pricing out natives. Still, he tries. 'I want a beer and I want that guy to come over and I know he won't come over so why do I bother when I know he won't be coming over. The game is the game. Can I get out. Do I want to get out.' Nova Scotia House is intensely claustrophobic, its jittery rhythm an incantation to all that we can lose in life, even as we are still busy living it: youth, hope, optimism, alongside the helpless yearning for a better tomorrow. Its pages are steeped in alienation, and soaked in melancholy. What is it like, Porter posits, to be almost 50 and still feel that the world around you remains so cursorily hostile? How do we maintain our tribes? But while the writing style can seem suffocating, there is purpose to it. It pulls you in, then holds you appalled, hypnotised. It is of course the critic's bad habit to read autobiography into fiction, but Porter has conjured such intensity here, and such tangibly real characters, that it feels like the gospel truth. This is a book that works both as a tribute to those who died of the cruellest disease, and as a more general lament to love, loss and remembrance. It is profoundly, bracingly human. Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter is published by Particular Books (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Nova Scotia House' Reimagines London's Queer Life and History
LONDON — The British journalist Charlie Porter, who has just released his debut novel 'Nova Scotia House' (Particular Books), owes a lot of what he's learned about writing to fashion criticism. The former menswear critic of The Financial Times who has also penned two nonfiction books about clothing and style, says writing about fashion shows helped him process information, work out what to put where, and how to keep a reader 'tickled.' More from WWD Designers Toast 'From the Rez to the Runway' Author at Bookmarc Party French DJ Michel Gaubert Has Written a Book Kylie Manning Explores Time, Light, and Motherhood in 'There Is Something That Stays' at Pace Gallery 'Everyone has an idea of what a fashion show is, but the reality of it is so weird. Most people never get to go to a fashion show, so they don't really understand the weirdness of it. It's an education of processing information and just sitting there and listening to stuff and thinking about it,' he says. His book follows a similar pattern. There are lists and thoughts from the point of view of Johnny, a 45-year-old gay man reflecting on his life in the East End flat that belonged to his deceased lover, Jerry, who died in 1995 from an AIDS-related illness. The opening paragraph starts with a list of clothes that Johnny is ticking off in his head. 'Two pairs of sneakers, a pair of boots. Two coats — a waterproof and a duffel, back of the door — mine, not his.' Johnny is 19 when he meets Jerry, who is 45 and HIV positive. Porter says his aim was to document queer lives in the 20th century and to write about sex, love, HIV/AIDS, desire, counterculture, nightlife and community. 'So much goes undocumented because people lived closeted lives and the media was pretty much entirely homophobic. To actually find primary sources where you get an actual sense of being with a [queer] person is really difficult,' he contends. Porter uses the character of Jerry to pass down knowledge to Johnny of a life before the HIV/AIDS crisis. He touches on the 'philosophies and experiments' of queer men in the '60s and '70s. 'I'm very aware of the lack of passing down of knowledge, because people died. There were few people left to pass this chain of knowledge shared between generations,' he says. The Johnny character is partly autobiographical. 'He exists today. I wanted to write about someone my age who came to London at the same time I did,' says Porter, who, like his characters, lives in East London. But that's where the similarities stop. 'The house came first because I was thinking about a council block near where I live and I thought about who could be living in those flats,' he adds. Porter describes the house that Jerry and Johnny live in as if it were a character. He describes it as a sanctuary of love, while the garden acts as the home's beating heart. 'Houses can affect a relationship, and I wanted to think about [the characters] living in a space where their lives flowed with a garden that was westerly facing, so they got sunlight and could grow their own food,' he explains. The conversations and overthinking that take place in Nova Scotia House four years prior to Jerry's death shape Johnny's character. '[Johnny] is an exploration of who I could've been. He has emotional intelligence,' says Porter. When Porter arrived in London in the mid-'90s, he was terrified of experimenting with queer life in the city, and instead put all his energy into his journalism career. He was offered a place on the fashion journalism M.A. course at Central Saint Martins by Louise Wilson, the legendary course director for the M.A. fashion program who shaped the careers of designers including Lee Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane and Simone Rocha. 'I couldn't afford the course, so I had to get a regular job,' he says of securing his first job as a researcher at The Daily Express newspaper before moving on to The Times of London, Esquire U.K., The Guardian, GQ U.K. and Fantastic Man. After leaving publishing, he began writing books. His first, 'What Artists Wear' (Penguin U.K.), was published in 2021, followed by 'Bring No Clothes' (Penguin U.K.) in 2023. He's been writing fiction since 2008, although 'Nova Scotia House' is his first published work. 'Someone very senior in publishing in 2008 said to me, 'There's no market for gay fiction.' But I just kept writing for myself,' says Porter. Life has moved on since then, however, and he's already writing his second gay novel. Best of WWD Carmen Dell'Orefice, 93: The World's Oldest Supermodel Redefining Timeless Beauty and Ageless Elegance [PHOTOS] Donatella Versace's Daughter Allegra Versace Beck: Fashion Moments Through the Years [Photos] A Look Back at Vanity Fair Best Dressed Red Carpet Stars
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Penis-inscribed tables and parking meter chairs: the lost queer genius of House of Beauty and Culture
How do we tell histories, particularly queer histories, when they are ignored by the establishment? In 1986, a loose design collective of around eight people named the House of Beauty and Culture started a shop in Dalston, east London. At the time, Dalston was a desolate area, nothing like the fashionable neighbourhood it is today. The House of Beauty and Culture was so unconventional, it barely ever opened. Its output included shoes, furniture, garments, jewellery and art. Much of the work was made from salvaged materials, for both aesthetic and financial reasons: the collective were all broke. The floor of the shop was scattered with loose change, as a joke on their collective lack of money. Their romantic, fragile work was made against the backdrop of Margaret Thatcher's Britain, in the shadow of the Aids crisis. It only lasted a few years, but the impact of the shop was so great that, according to legend, the artist and fashion designer Martin Margiela first turned to deconstruction after his visit. In 2015, a Louis Vuitton menswear show was inspired by the collective: its then designer, Kim Jones, was an avid collector of their work. And yet, today, no pieces by its protagonists are held in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, nor the Design Museum. In our institutions, it's like HOBAC never existed. To me, HOBAC has always seemed from a parallel universe, with creative freedom totally at odds with the crippling environment of today's London. For the past five years, I've been writing a novel, Nova Scotia House, attempting to reconnect with queer philosophies and alternate ways of living from the 70s and 80s. The primary focus is HIV/Aids, and the underexplored repercussions of that pandemic. But also central to the narrative are stories of queer creative acts, like HOBAC, that have been underacknowledged. It's not just their work, it's how they worked: communally, collaboratively, outside heteronormative value systems. Its members included John Moore, the shoemaker who founded the collective; Judy Blame, a jeweller and stylist who went on to art direct the debut albums by Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack; Richard Torry, who worked in knitwear, and the designer Christopher Nemeth, known for making garments from old postal sacks. Within fashion circles, these names are known and respected. It is the furniture makers Frick & Frack who to me seem entirely excluded from cultural discourse. The duo, Alan MacDonald and Fritz Solomon, often made pieces that looked as if they should fall over. Chairs of salvaged wood seem to not have enough support to hold them up; lamps of bent pipe have the lightbulb so far from the base it is as if they will topple. Found objects became visual jokes, like a table made from a stolen parking restriction sign, or a chair seat made from the cover of an old parking meter that reads 'NO: WAITING, LOADING, UNLOADING'. Their friend Dave Baby would often add provocative carvings to the furniture. According to Kasia Maciejowska's 2016 book on HOBAC, Boy George ordered a set of two tables and four chairs from Frick & Frack, with penises carved into the armrests by Dave Baby. The work wasn't cheap: they charged George £4,000, the equivalent of about £11,700 today. The value was in the craft, rather than the materials used: Frick & Frack's make was exquisite, even if the look was raw. Many of their friends still live with their pieces, nearly four decades on. This was how I wanted to depict the work in my novel: radical furniture, made within a community, that was part of everyday life, indeed that made living better, but was unrepresented in institutions. Those living with the furniture are now entering late midlife and late life: what happens to the legacy when they are gone? Frick & Frack's work is often confused with that of Andy Marshall, AKA Andy the Furniture Maker, a gay man who was also making furniture with salvaged materials. Recently, a 1986 documentary about Andy has become cult viewing online, raising his profile. But, just like Frick & Frack, no work by Andy the Furniture Maker can be found in the V&A nor the Design Museum. Andy was close friends with the artist Derek Jarman, as were members of HOBAC. Today, Jarman is widely known for his films, books, and his Dungeness home Prospect Cottage, with its shingle garden. Still to be more widely acknowledged is his art – there has yet to be a Jarman retrospective at Tate Britain – and his experiments in living as a young man. In the 1970s, Jarman and his friends made homes in a series of abandoned warehouses on the South Bank of the Thames. We can particularly see Jarman's philosophy of living in his first film, Studio Bankside, 1971, and the last, Glitterbug, a compilation of Super 8 footage released posthumously. He makes art, he reads, he thinks, they party, they play. It is Jarman's design of living that matters, like a hammock strung across a room: pleasure is essential. Of course, the easy response is that no one can live that way any more, that the cost of living is too great. But a re-creation of the past is not the point, it is about learning from the past. Such learning can only happen when our queer legacies are brought to light. Crucially, this is not about deification. It can feel as if Jarman has been elevated to sainthood, spoken about as though he were an overlord of UK queer culture. Actually, he was separate from much of counterculture. In the catalogue for the Tate's current Leigh Bowery show, Torry writes that while Bowery 'appreciated Derek being open about his sexuality, he hated Derek's aesthetic, which he found too earnest.' HOBAC and Jarman are influences on my novel, but so too are illegal raves and lawless gay bars, the ecosystems of which to me are the result of creative acts. I was thinking about Gideon Berger, the DJ and co-founder of the NYC Downlow, Glastonbury's queer club that's been running during the festival since 2007, often described as the best party in the world. Berger grew up in south London in the 80s and early 90s, obsessed with pirate radio. He went to illegal raves and squat parties, eventually setting up his own queer sound system. When nightlife is historicised, it is usually clubs that are listed or promoted, rather than the ephemeral or the outlier. In my novel, I wanted to show illegal rave culture as embedded in queer experience. It's also the creative nourishment that comes from the seemingly squalid. A gay bar is more than just booze and a backroom. It is the philosophies with which they are established and run, just as vital as the something-from-nothing ethics of HOBAC. A prime example is the Joiners Arms, an east London after-hours gay bar opened with intentional permissiveness. 'The Joiners is a theoretical impossibility,' its late landlord David Pollard told writer Paul Flynn for a 2008 i-D feature. 'That's one of its joys. It shouldn't exist, legally even. But if enough people want to have fun they can sustain somewhere like it.' The Joiners closed in 2015. What matters is the seriousness with which it took pleasure. It changed my life. From 2008-2012, I co-ran a weekly party on Thursday nights at the Joiners called Macho City. At the time, I was a jobbing journalist at the tipping point of mainstream print media's decline. Before, I'd spent most nights at the Joiners hogging the jukebox to play Sylvester records. We started the party to keep late disco and Hi-NRG in the contemporary conversation. Each week, it was wild. It opened my eyes to what else I could do. The party in the Joiners led to me being able to write books. Try to write these histories as nonfiction, and so much would be blank. So much was not recorded at the time, inevitable in communities that face discrimination, or was misrepresented in homophobic media. So many died in the Aids crisis, their stories now gone. Institutions such as the V&A and the Design Museum can, and should, act to ensure queer histories are represented, before they are lost. In the meantime, to get to the heart of these stories, close to what feels to me like truth, all I could do was write fiction. Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter is published by Particular (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
