Paul Daly Fucking Loves Hackney Wick
The artist and owner of Hackney Wick Warehouse talks all things E9, painting a broad and positive view of the regeneration
Written for ‘It Used To Be Nice Round Here’, a zine about Hackney Wick’s regeneration made in collaboration wtih Catalina Chaverra Brown, Olivia Oben, Daisy Redfern and Julia Silverberg“You either get it or you don’t. Some people might not see it, I think you have to know London or be a very visual person or just tuned in to see how amazing it fucking is.” Throughout all my dialogue with Paul Daly, sculpter and owner of Hackney Wick Warehouse, this is perhaps the best summation of his feelings about Hackney Wick. With every word, he elicited a pure love for the area.
It wasn’t always so easy to admit any admiration for the area, though. “It was a dirty word in the 80s,” Daly explains. “Everybody in those days wanted to live in Chelsea because Kings Road was the big road in the punk days... what’s amazing is if you look at it now, all those kids used to go “Oh Chelsea, daddy. I’d like to live in Chelsea daddy” and now it’s Hackney, which is mad!” It’s like the kids Jarvis Cocker sings about in Common People- they wanna see whatever common people see. “That’s the rebranding of the London borough of Hackney. But Hackney Wick wasn’t really a thing at all until the artists started,” he continues. “I used to go there to get my oxyacetylene in the 80s but it wasn’t even a vibe.” To hear that Hackney Wick was once vibeless is almost unbelievable when one walks around nowadays. How has it become the place with, arguably, the best vibes in London? To Paul, it’s all down to community and the innovative ways that property developers like himself have ensured that these communities can thrive.
The concept of co-living especially fascinates the artist. “Co-living is unbelievably important. It’s a way forward. And it literally has a lot to do with the fact people can communicate.” When he first arrived in London, many of the artists of Paul’s day (including himself) were squatting around Shoreditch. After all, that’s how those communities were maintained in the 80s. The co-living trend that has particularly struck Hackney Wick provides a safer, legal option for struggling artists. “The end result of all that evolution is that people are purpose-building co-living blocks which is phenomenally mind-blowing,” Paul argues. “All those warehouses that are now being repurposed for co-living have now ended up leading to a need for purpose-built co-living.” The best thing about co-living, we agree on, is how it forges groups of artists together. They can live and breathe art, constantly informing each other's work.
When I posed Daly with the idea that ‘it used to be nice round here [Hackney Wick]’, he had some incredibly profound observations. “I don’t think things should remain derelict or that things should be stopped just because people liked it in a particular time,” he reflects. He continues “The notion of “It used to be nice around here” is the wrong terminology. It should have said “It used to be cool around here” because, in my view, it’s getting nice around there.” And that really gets to the heart of it. Pre-Olympics, Hackney Wick was more-or-less an industrial wasteland. It was “cool” in the sense that it had, and still has, this rich history of rebellious artistry but it was missing a degree of “nice”. To many, this wasn’t an issue. An edge always adds a level of attractiveness to any area but that edge must grow with that area rather than hinder its growth. The contrast of old brick warehouses like Hackney Wick Warehouse, which was built in 1910, and newer constructions such as the Bagel Factory only makes the industrial aesthetic stand out more!
The allure of Hackney Wick is best put in one of the last things Paul said to me: “It was never meant to be what it is now and therein lies its amazingness.”