In 1987, Matthew Flowers was living in Clapton and commuting every day to the West End art gallery set up by his mother, the renowned British gallerist, Angela Flowers, hailed as the original godmother of BritArt.

“In my twenties I started spending a lot of time in Manhattan, especially in Soho. The New York contemporary art scene was so much more developed than London. We had this relatively small gallery off Charlotte Street and every day I would drive into the West End up Richmond Road in the middle of Hackney, past all the warehouse spaces.

One day, I saw a ‘To Let’ sign up outside one of the warehouses and had this vision of transforming it into the sort of art spaces I had seen in New York. It was a furrier’s warehouse, 4,500 square feet with very high ceilings. Mum and I said to each other, “We’re already paying £30 per foot in the West End, and this space is £2, feels like downtown Manhattan and is only three and a half miles from the centre of London. Let’s do it.”

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