This is a happy and a sad tale of a girl with two bedrooms. Ali, also known as Ali Coco Epps is a master wordsmith, performer and filmmaker. She is probably someone I’d never want to play Scrabble with, as pondering over words brings her nothing but joy - even down to changing all the original words to cheeky anagrams on a menu board her brother picked up Islington.
She is one of five inhabitants that live in this extraordinary space and has lived here for just five months. But as I took the pictures, the shed clock was ticking and by the end of the week, the little wooden bedrooms will be no more - meaning all the shed people have had to find new homes. She is very sad to leave this special place and the great people she has shared it with. But fortunately for Ali, her new pad is just one floor down, in this disused 1920’s factory building in East London.
This is her new bedroom - equally as compact and as sweet as her shedroom. All that is missing is the bed, which I am sure is in there now.
She has collected some delightful things over the years, including the 1920’s circus outfit hung on the wall, and the red clock that Ali Coco Epps and her fellow performers try to include in every film they make, some of which can be seen on the Patty & Hills YouTube channel.
I asked Ali what she’d save her bedroom were on fire? She said, “There is so much stuff, like my 1930’s dressing table, that I would carry on my back, along with the black and white photograph of my Mum - she sat for Stephen Dwoskin in the 60’s, an avant-garde film maker. And every story I have ever written since I was three.”
I asked Ali what she’d save her bedroom were on fire? She said, “There is so much stuff, like my 1930’s dressing table, that I would carry on my back, along with the black and white photograph of my Mum - she sat for Stephen Dwoskin in the 60’s, an avant-garde film maker. And every story I have ever written since I was three.”