“In late December 2018, I drove through DTLA for the first time. As I passed through the concrete chasms and shining edifices I wondered at the majesty of Los Angeles, king of all it surveys.

Then I found myself in 6th Street.

The shock was visceral. As far as I could see in every direction were hundreds and hundreds of tents, the filthy streets were populated with thousands of lost souls, seemingly ignored, abandoned, shunned.

The juxtaposition was jarring. Here was the city of glamour, success, riches beyond mortal dreams and yet, here in the very heart of it was its dirty secret, the corner of carpet where its most destitute detritus was swept under and left to rot.

As a foreigner, I have witnessed poverty in many countries around the world, not least my own, but the power to shock me came, not from the poverty, but the proximity. How could this place exist only ten miles across town from the shining temple to luxury that is Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills?

I discovered that this place had a name, Skid Row, and a demarcation on the map that helpfully allowed LA’s other resident to know how to avoid being confronted with this unpalatable reality.

I resolved to do something as an artist to try and capture and articulate my initial response before I too became desensitised, complacent and finally oblivious to what lay before me.

I decided that I wasn’t going to do a ‘poverty porn’ piece that tried to elicit sympathy or pity. That wasn’t what had made an impact on me in the first place. I wanted to force the wrong ends of a magnet together. I wanted to make luxury look poverty in the face.

I selected twelve of the most prestigious brands with stores on Rodeo Drive and decided to see what it would look like if they made the tents that the houseless shelter in.

I wanted to make something that confused the viewer emotionally. The love for the aspirational luxury and glamour that these brands have spent so much time and money seducing us with is a hard thing to ignore. To covet the classic Chanel hounds-tooth design seems wrong when it is draped over the home of someone living a damaged life on the street. And it’s a spell that can’t be broken easily.

So I engaged with the residents of the pavements of San Julian, the amazing Catherine Morris of the Hippie Kitchen, the management and volunteers of LA Community Action Network, particularly Pete White, General Dogon and Skid Row resident artist, ShowzArt.

Together we carried out the installation of Skid Rodeo Drive in the heart of Skid Row that pulled no punches. Twelve luxury branded tents were erected by houseless volunteers and were quickly enveloped by the street and its residents.

In February 2020 we returned to LA to make ‘From The Row To Rodeo’ – pitching tents one at a time across Los Angeles in a journey from Skid Row to Rodeo Drive, taking the temperature of the city’s feelings towards the work as we progressed.

This time the tents were occupied by people experiencing homelessness or celebrities, either way no one would know as they wore a flesh-coloured mask over their head to hide their true identity. With no way to know, how would the viewer be able to judge the worth of the person sitting outside the tent?

As the press coverage grew, the Rodeo Drive publicists went to work and we were told by Beverly Hills Police Department that, due to an ordinance specific only to the City of Beverly Hills, tents could not be erected in public on pain of confiscation or arrest. I decided that we would take three of the tents and parade them, fully pitched down Rodeo Drive on the back of flatbed trucks. Despite Beverly Hills’ Police protestations, the journey was complete.

Responses to the work ranged from high praise to threats of drive by shootings but the artwork isn’t meant to just exist in that one moment, the film, photographs and the tents themselves were created to carry that story and its challenging narrative to a global audience.”

Chemical X