Woke up this morning from a dream about converting a hoarder's townhouse into a gallery. This person, played by a friend (best man Alex) but obviously not the same person, was moving out/moving on but had been something on the scene. His house was full of the fascinating crap that accretes in such places, along with quantities of filth, insects (I discretely moved my feet out of the way of some huge carpet beetles) and the usual decay. The entire bottom floor had been extended and knocked through creating what would be a decent space "but you can't see that right now as there's so much crap against the walls" I told my investor, who was here with the TV crew, because it's not really happening if there isn't a documentary.

Here's a mock-up of what the gallery would look like. The house already had a big crack down the front - and was a well-known party/hangout space for the local arts scene, informally and affectionately known as the Crack House, with that slight frisson of naughty that artsfolk like so much. The idea was to work with the crack and the dilapidation, with minimum intervention for safety and structure.



Upstairs there were two large rooms that would work for installation and performance spaces. The attic wasn't open yet, but that would provide a good project in a few year's time. It was small for a gallery, but two other problem properties, one corridor thin and the other rather larger with good-sized rooms, could potentially provide spillover space, if the deals on those properties went through (they were on streets round the corner, so there would be a little walk between the galleries).

I was pretty excited about this, as you might imagine.