P-ta - SE London

P-ta is the lead singer of the surrealistic, Pseudo Nippon – see the picture above of his rice ball hat, he wears when he is performing. 
I text him to say ‘I’m outside’ and within moments he was there to greet me and take me into the the squatted former print shop. Two people sat downstairs, smoking and chatting. We walked up stairs to the old office area. Someone had set-up a washing line in the hallway. Further down we walked, and then he said, “Here we are, this is my room.” I looked down, and there was the door, like something out of Alice in Wonderland, it was the tiniest bedroom door I had ever seen. Cut out of a large piece of stained wood, that P-ta had built, there was an arched shaped door - just big enough to fit a body on all fours through. He leant forwards and opened the door by pulling an orange plastic crab handle, “After you” he said, so I bent down and looked into a pinkish light. I threw my tripod through the small tunnel and crawled in. Seconds later, I pushed myself up into a boxed size bedroom space. A mattress on the floor, covered with a brightly coloured blanket, and a shrine to the left. P-ta's shrine to fish. He said, “I’m really into folk art, the different objects represent different Gods – some people give them to me and others are ones I have collected – I know as soon as I see something, that it’s right for the shrine. I also collect fish books, books about the ocean. One day I would like to have a fish book library. I particularly like the books from the 1970’s – the saturated colours and the style of the photography.” Tongue firmly in cheek, he says this all stems from his ‘made-up’ religion, Pork Tai Chi. He says the fish represent calmness and the sea represents the unknown.

When he moved here a few months ago, the space was open plan. He decided to make the door the size it is, build a shrine in there and paint the wall pink. There is nothing conventional or practical about this room, but for it’s novelty value, it is great. It feels like a secret cave near an unknown ocean. I can almost picture him stood on a mound rocks, looking out to sea, playing his Shakuhachi.

When I asked P-ta what he would save if his bedroom, sorry I mean shrine, were on fire, he said, “I couldn’t choose which item to take, each one is as important as the other. I would leave everything and go.”