This was my first installation in my home/studio. March 2008. After a particularly deep depression I'd finally managed to get off the sofa with some inspiration. My home had been a very private piece of work I'd been diligently working on for years. It was very personal and expressive, a far cry from the commercial work for which I'd become known. Few people had ever seen my real work and through therapy I'd found a way to start to consider allowing people in.
I came up with the idea of The Story Of Little. It was to tell the story of my childhood and first few years in London. I built a labyrinth throughout the entire house. It was a real purge. You sort of crawled through a series of small spaces with little peepholes behind which I depicted little scenes from my childhood. Such as myself sat on a staircase, stroking my cat as my father explained he was leaving my mother and was in love with her friend. I wrote little notes over everything, scrawled in sharpie pen, 'hearing the key in the door he hurriedly abandoned himself back under the bed.'
You climbed up a ladder to find a little bed under which lay a series of boxes labelled with my emotions. It was exploring my childhood and the rather abrupt ending of it. After my parents divorce I had packed away anything of my real feelings, including all the sadness and natural anger I felt at the time. Behind a little window a TV silently played a loop of clips I'd collected as a teenager, glimpses of penis shots I'd loving recorded from French movies played in the early hours on Channel 4.
You then entered a tiny nightclub full of disco balls and fans blowing glitter. Upon headphones you were invited to dance for a moment listening to Felix, Don't You Want My Loving.
It was my favourite track from 1992, when one particular morning at 11am on my 19th Birthday I took an entire gram of speed and considering dying in joy as the dance floor erupted.
'Periodically he abandoned himself to periods of decadence and self decay' summed up that particularly hedonistic part of my life.
I'd arrived in London and shaken off a rather unhappy childhood and rather rapidly delved fast and deep into all life had to offer.
The Story of Little from Tony Hornecker on Vimeo.