A bastion of splendid non-conformity: Brian Griffin’s photos of Duggie Fields at home in the late 70s

Among my current projects is an article for Apartamento about the great British artist Duggie Fields and his flat in London’s Earl’s Court.

Fields has lived there since Christmas 1968 (when he moved in with his late flatmate, Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett). Over the decades, this space in a mansion block off Earl’s Court Road has simultaneously served as Field’s studio and an outcome of his practice. To visit Fields the living art object at home is to become immersed in an ever-evolving art environment.

Fields’ presence at the Barney Bubbles x Fred Perry launch a couple of weeks back jogged the memory of another attendee, photographer Brian Griffin, who took these portraits of the artist and his home for an unpublished magazine commission in the late 1970s.

Brian has kindly sent me a selection of his photos. I’ve added a snap I took with my phone earlier this summer. Fields’ flat remains one of the hidden gems of London, a bastion of splendid non-conformity in an increasingly sterile city.

Fields himself has been a vocal critic of the depredations of the neighbourhood enabled by the complicity of Kensington & Chelsea Borough Council, which is much in the news over the scandal regarding the immolated Grenfell Tower and rolled over a couple of years back in the face of the savage £8bn “redevelopment” of the adjacent Earls Court exhibition centre site.

Long may Duggie and his extraordinary apartment thrive.