The Dungenesser [Gorup de Besanez (CC BY-SA 3.0) detail]

THE block of flats does not bear a Blue Plaque – yet – and while film-maker Derek Jarman’s home in Dungeness, Kent, is a listed monument to his life, his West End flat is not so well known.

Jarman rented a home in Phoenix House, Flitcroft Street, between 1979 and his death in 1994.

Now artist Jane Palm Gold is telling Jarman’s St Giles’ story and the impact his time at Phoenix House had on his work in a new exhibition, hosted a stone’s throw from Jarman’s London address.

Jane, who has written extensively on the history of the St Giles area, believes Jarman’s artistic output can be re-considered by understanding his time there.

Phoenix House Balcony l

“I’ve been going to Phoenix House for many years to see friends who live there,” she recalls. “These friends live on a particular floor and I subsequently found out Derek lived on the one above. I was on my way to his flat one day on the exterior landing when it struck me the correlation or similarities between the views across the back of the Shaftesbury Theatre towards St. Giles and Derek’s garden view at Dungeness. That was the spark to the show.”

Derek Jarman: From Soho to the Fifth Continent took five years to research and drew on a number of different archives. “The primary sources were Jarman’s films, all the books, diaries and journals, especially Modern Nature and Smiling in Slow Motion – the latter covers his life at Phoenix House.

Another source was Tony Peake’s marvellous Derek Jarman: A Biography – amazing, detailed research and comprehensively covers all of Derek’s life and work,” she says.

And Derek’s impact meant there were plenty of galleries who, 30 years after his death, still mark his impact.

“I went to exhibitions at the Garden Museum, the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. I conducted interviews. There were website posts by Tim Sullivan, who worked on the scripts for Neutron and many other online leads I followed. I listened to BBC radio broadcasts and podcasts too.”

In the Garden III by Jane Palm-Gold

This gave her a thorough grounding in the world of Jarman – and helped her explore the influence of Phoenix House on the film-maker.

“I researched the connection between the Shaftesbury Theatre and the Phoenix House flats – even looking at the architectural plans of Phoenix House, while further information was gleaned from the autobiography by Christopher Biggins, who rented two flats next to each other and helped Derek get his flat next door,” she adds.

Jane met many long-term tenants at the building, and also explored the late’80s and early ’90s LGBTQ+ clubs that were scattered around St Giles and the West End to create a comprehensive image of Jarman’s life.

His most famous abode is his cottage at Dungeness, which is now a National Trust property. Jane stayed there to nurture a further connection with her subject. But it is his Phoenix House work she believes needs to be remembered and celebrated. “It is an important part of his legacy and I feel he must be commemorated there with a plaque,” she adds.

“But he also had a difficult time at Phoenix House – especially the period of six years with no funding for his film projects.

Jane Palm-Gold [Ray Stevenson]

“He’d completed The Tempest when he moved there and then went straight into writing and developing Neutron – a project David Bowie was to be involved in. This project was developed between 1979-81 and had 14 rewrites – and then collapsed. After such an enormous amount of work it must have been a body blow. This is why Derek went into directing pop promos for the Pet Shop Boys and Marianne Faithful. He was desperately short of money.

“It was then that he was able to fund Angelic Conversations and more funding followed for Caravaggio, which was released in 1986. In the last months of that year, he went through a very challenging time – including being given the devastating diagnoses as being HIV positive.

But that, and an inheritance from his father Lance, spurred him on to move out of London and land upon the Fifth Quarter of the Globe, as Derek called his beloved Dungeness.”

As the exhibition explores, Derek did not let loose his talent in one area: he was a polymath.
“I stand amazed the huge range of knowledge Derek had at his fingertips,” she says.

“Early in his career he worked on The Devils by Ken Russell for which he designed the sets. The research for these set him off on the trail of 16th-century alchemists – alchemy was a subject he subsequently became very interested in. Derek had a life full of achievements – but often these earlier ones are celebrated now rather than when he was alive.

Derek Jarman

“He flourished in the last four years of his life and completed an enormous amount of great work after he was diagnosed HIV positive: four films – The Last of England, The Garden, Edward II and Blue were all completed and then there were other books and diaries. His long-time partner Keith Collins must also get enormous credit for this: it was he who really enabled Derek to complete this work and who loved and looked after him tirelessly in those last years.”

As the exhibition reveals, Jarman’s world has left an indelible mark.

“Derek leaves an incredible legacy and his creative influence becomes increasingly important as the years go by,” adds Jane.

“His work took many forms and encompassed a great range of artistic practices, including writing, painting, sculpture, set design, film-making. There’s his garden project at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness. There his important legacy as a champion of LGBTQIA+ rights and his work as a spokesperson when he became what Keith Collins called “the public face of AIDS” in the ’90s. As a man, he was kind and did an awful lot of good in the world. Perhaps it should be his brother-in-law, David Temple, who should have last word and provide us with a fitting epitaph for Jarman as a person: Derek was ‘always positive and was a man that lifted the people around him and gave everyone a sense of wellbeing.”

• Derek Jarman: From Soho to the Fifth Continent is at Farsight Gallery, 4 Flitcroft Street, WC2H 8DJ from September 3-18.