Over the years I started looking at the exhibitions they were putting on and they were dreadful. They were frightening. I don't want to be perjorative here but they used to put on one a year that was the local artists exhibition, no selection, slammed on the wall. Generally I'm all for that, I think its excellent notion, so I put my work into it. I used to hang out there and draw a bit and then as the years went by, I thought, hmm, its got better; there's a bit of quality appearing, someone had clearly taken charge and something was going on.

I dunno - I think I probably met Saskia at an opening or in a pub. She's a fine woman, lots of arts background, and she was very interested in doing a residency and so was I because I wanted permission to hang about, without some geezer coming up and saying what are you doing here or without frightening the public or all those things. And so she ran it past the geezer that ran Hall Place, and he agreed and he said you can have a studio, you will have a show at the end of the year and we'll fill in the rest as it goes. So the studio wasn't ready and it didn't get ready and I kind of ignored that and I just hung around, drawing, and really getting behind the scenes which was very nice for me. I got to work in bits that weren't open to the public, that were being restored.

I was watching walls, not being taken down but peeled off, surfaces peeled off to the stuff underneath which was perfect for the kind of work I do. And then I got more and more freaked. One of the rooms that was closed off had this fabulous roof. It was modelled plaster, very exciting and beautiful. It had half-naked people in foliage and fruit, very beautiful. And it gradually dawned on me that this entire place had been built on slavery. On the slave trade. These beautiful people with fruit and foliage about them were property. And it took very little research to discover that, yes indeed, Hall Place had been built on the backs and the torture of Caribbeans, Africans. And it was regarded as a decorative element.

I got very interested in how Hall Place, which is essentially a middle-class bouregious hang-out where you go for lunch 'cos its a nice place to go, kind of doesn't mention this. Which seemed to me a very odd thing not to mention and a very critical element in the building.

I did loads and loads of work, and after three months - not having a studio there, mostly taking notes there and belting back to my studio in Woolwich to work- one of the education team decided to set up a series of workshops for local schools, mostly because we could get funding for it so we did that, and we put in proposals and rather to my surprise they were accepted so we did an a months series of workshops to a very mixed range of groups, ages and abilities all of which was informed by an exhibition of the work.. We put up the exhibition - me and the art team - all done in conjunction, they'd seen the work, knew what we were going to show - put it up, thought, right!

We went out to lunch, came back, bosh, two key pieces missing. We thought, what's happening, we've been robbed! Can you believe it? So off goes Saskia and back she came quite a long time later, very pale, very quiet, and saying they'd been removed. The Arts Council - local rep - was there 'cos we'd all been having lunch together which was rather good news, and she was saying what do you mean, they've been removed - and, well, we never actually found out.

I was told by Saskia that she had been told that they were too strong for the building, that the content was too rich, you know - the guy that directed the place said there was nothing at fault with the work but he thought it wasn't appropriate. I was told, you make a fuss and the arts team get sacked. Arts are not a priority, this is going to cause trouble, they will just go.

So I said, OK, we'll do the workshops, and if you think I'm doing another exhibition then you are not correct. And at the end of that I left. Muttering dark things. Seriously, because I felt the whole show had been neutralised. I wrote to the director and said, I do not understand. Perhaps you would be good enough to explain. I have a copy of the letter somewhere around if you want it. And I did bump into him. And he said, oh god, thanks for your letter, yes, I'II be replying - and I never heard a squeak.

It was not particularly shattering. The work was displayed on the minstrels' gallery in the main hall, which is quite a nice space, its quite large, and you go through it to another gallery so it gets through traffic. And it's large enough to take groups of students before taking them into the workshop. Hanging over it was a very old bronze, copper, I dunno - shiny metal - light fitting, old but robust, and from that I hung an equivalent shape made of wire from which were suspended dolls. Hall Place used to be a school and I had a wretched time at boarding school as a girl and I felt quite strongly that type of dolour in the building, and these dolls were tied together, they had little porcelain faces and long eyelashes but their faces were smashed in. I happened to buy them like that, they were at Woolwich market at 50p each, I could never had done it! And it was very striking, you know, a bundle of well dressed dolls, all tied together, beautiful eyes, holes where their faces should be. It was a very eloquent piece, it was not dangerous or challenging piece, there were labels explaining the piece - I couldn't see the sense in taking them down, I really couldn't.

And the other piece - Oh, I was so cross it went because I didn't have time to photograph it in situ. What it was was a pair of wings cast out of latex and structured with toothbrushes. The wings and the toothbrushes are laid down here in a glass case, the wings are life size, angel size, you know! and behind that is another display cabinet with a torso. You know those torsos that show underwear in shop windows? and there's a slit here, [just below belly] I dunno why, but that's the way it came to me; and this creature has got wings also and the wings are folded through the slit here like the description of the cherubim in the Bible holding the ark of the covenant, by the way - that's just one of the references - and there are wires, wires that they give you w ith headphones on aeroplances to watch TV with, wires that fall off your walkman - I have a vast collection of these things - so the wires were coming out of the cage, so you've got the element of being contained and concealed and there is access, a way in and a way out, though sealed, to it and the references to the front display cabinet - and the reflections between the two were lovely. I'd been thinking about the piece but I hadn't been expecting it to look so good, you know? So I was very chuffed and I get back from lunch to find half of its missing. He'd left the latex wings with the toothbrushes - why? Why? I still have no idea why.

"How come you have no control over your own exhibition? At the end of the day it's an exhibition of your work."

His building? I dunno. For me, the things that were really challenging were the paintings I'd done - God, they hurt, they were difficult to do and - really - mostly because I painted them on this ancient, um, I dunno what you call it but it was behind the walls, when they were peeling off the walls there was this stuff that was some kind of primative damp course, it was green waxed paper with tar and hair sandwiched between it; it was gorgeous but it was brittle and it was dodgy and I got as much of it as I could and it was on that that I worked in very delicate layers of white oil - it had to be delicate because the paper wouldn't take it - and I did images from this pargetted ceiling, this plastered roof, and I took all these pretty images and I looped in slave collars and chains and manacles. I knew nothing about this period but when I researched it I found it was quite usual for slaves to wear spiked collars, bells, chains, masks, manacles - just accepted, astonishing - so I drew them in. These pieces were enormous and difficult to do and I thought they were really - they were the dangerous things! But this bozo, you know - he didn't know what was important and what wasn't. So anyway. Cancelled the exhibition, the one I should have had at the end of the year, and not been in contact since.

It varies - in the Hall Place instance they didn't pay me anything. What I did was get myself funded from somewhere else, so I was a gift to them. Which I think in retrospect was a mistake. I think if they'd been paying for me, they'd have had more respect.

Curiously. And interestingly, I've been censored two other times in very similar circumstances, where they say, get that stuff out of here and they don't talk to you again. In '84, I was invited to exhibit at the Festival Hall. Me and the artists I shared a studio with, four of us. Picked by the man that ran the exhibition space, named John Gill who now runs Chisenhale exhibition space. Adore him. So he looked at my work and said are you any good with light? To cut a long story short, I did an 84 foot long installation across the main entrance to the Festival Hall. I don't know how well you know the building. If you come in from the River, the entrance there. I made 16 panels, filled with polythene, put up one night from scaffolding. All done with private sponsorship. I just went knocking on peoples doors. Got the kit and blagged getting it up. And very nice it was too, I must say.

Well I worked out what I needed and asked the people who could give it to me to give it to me. Newsoms Timber gave me the wood. Transatlantic Plastics gave me the polythene; Rotring inks gave me the transparent colours.

So up it went. And the next thing I knew - there was an exhibition to support it in the ballroom space - for those of you too young to remember, there was a scandal at the time about a girl called Zola Budd, from South Africa. She ran barefoot and rather seized the public imagination. In order to run in the Olympics she claimed British Citizenship because as a South Afriacn she was excluded. God, anyone who tells you art isn't political just hasn't done anything!

Anyway, so there's Zola Budd and the papers are full of South Africans claiming to be Brit for their own ends - and the GLC refuse to let her practice at the running track in Crystal Palace, I think - and one of the girls on my team was called Letty Bosman. A white South African. She's left South Africa because she thought that apartheid was a disgusting system and didn't want anything to do with it. When she was old enough, she quit. The Times picked up that the GLC, who had banned Zola Budd from running in London, were now apparently supporting a white South African artist, my friend Letty Bosman. And before we knew what had happened, the show was out the window and they'd taken my piece down.

We did have a contract so they kept the exhibition, just moved the venue to the top floor where no-one ever goes. I wrote asking, why, why? It was quite clear that it was in response to The Times piece. But the mural wasn't even Letty Bosman, it was me - never even been to South Afria - and they never replied.

I didn't; John Gill, who ran the place, had no power either and he was gutted. It was the GLC. Specifically Tony Banks. Peter Pitt.

I hadn't had time to have it photographed properly. Couldn't get any coverage for it; again, John Gill and his team were told, make a fuss and you're sacked. We can't touch her, but you're for it. Artists Newsletter printed a thing warning other artists; that was all the coverage we could get.

I tell you what really frightens me; this has happened to me three times, (I've told you about twice, you get the idea) where some suit appears and says to the arts team get that out of here or you'll all get it in the neck. Now if I've experienced that three times by my great age, a lot of people I know must have had it happen to them at least once. And I started asking, and yes, most artists have experienced a level of censorship similar to mine. And this means a society that believes its artists have a free voice is misled. Where we are being oppressed by men in suits who are doing things for their own curious ends - I dunno what they are, they won't talk to me . It's very sinister. It may be happening everywhere. If people are oppressing artists, what's going on in the National Health Service? We're told there is a degree of bullying going on and I believe it.

I think the answer is to do nothing without a full and detailed contract.

Hmm. I talked with Saskia about this and she made a very good point. She said if you have a contract, you can't stretch it. You know in Britain we don't have a constitution - we're subjects, do you feel like a subject? I don't - but one of its strengths is that we can negotiate - with 'ER - pop over to the palace and straighten out a deal. Set a contract in stone and the danger is that you will only employ the artists that you trust not to rock the boat - you see?

There's a balance there which I'd address by letting artists do what they like, in others words, no balance at all. What are artists for? They are the truth sayers of our society. If they want to deal with issues around homelessness, you can bet it's a problem that needs addressing, not one that you can simply pretend isn't happening by censoring the artist. The state currently wants art that is a function of economic revival and regeneration of the inner city. Tourist trap and crowd puller.

Currently I'm working on the obscenity that is the over-feeding of the west, whilst the rest of the world starves. I try and do it cute, or I'd never have an audience. Or a sale. But anyone with half a brain knows what I'm up to and with luck enjoys the way I'm doing it, as a function of the message. If the artists are working on Bush's war then you can bet that's the issue that society shouldn't be ignoring.

To not let an artist have a voice is to cut the throat of society, to make it voiceless, then visionless. The future is our memory of desire. To pretend that the artist has a voice and ignore the fact that its been silenced means, I fear, a complete loss of future. And a lot of ratty people in the present!

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