Text: Ben Smoke Photography: Emma Balebela
In this series, we interview people in – and about – spaces personal to them. For the latest instalment, we catch up with Dana Margolin in her London studio to connect the dots between music, painting and her relationship with the city.
IN A CITY LIKE LONDON, it can feel overwhelming to just stop and be still for a second.
Disengage from autopilot mode, look around, and you’ll find the city rushes with a breathless quality. It reminds you of the sheer scale of the place, of your own personal relative insignificance. For many people, it can be too much. But Dana Margolin draws energy from it.
“I keep coming back to this idea that when you live in a city, or anywhere that’s occupied by loads of people, everything you see is touched by someone else,” says the Porridge Radio frontwoman, sitting on the floor of her small mezzanine studio in North London.
“Everything is there because somebody – maybe absent-mindedly, maybe not – has put it there. Every single thing is a result of somebody else living in the same space. So you’re constantly surrounded by everybody else’s thoughts and feelings and actions. At the moment, I’m just really obsessed with that idea. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
The studio is small and compact, squeezed into the rafters above a wider space Margolin shares with two others. There are two desks, bookcases stuffed with trinkets and paraphernalia, as well as stacks of canvases – a nod to the painting that occupies most of her time here. Outside, cars whizz past on the high street as litter slowly drifts along the pavement, powered by gusts of wind. Below, trains run in both directions, ferrying commuters further into the city or out towards its edges.
Dana grew up in the suburbs of Northwest London, before moving to Brighton at 19 to attend university. “[Porridge Radio bandmates] Sam and Maddie still live in Brighton and they find London really oppressive – and it can be. But, maybe because I grew up here, I am really fascinated by the people and things.”
Porridge Radio formed in Brighton, back in 2015. The city’s beaches, lanes and expansive horizons are woven into the band’s early work, and partly served as inspiration for the band’s Mercury-nominated 2020 album Ever Bad. Two years on, Margolin is back in her native London in a reflective mood. “When I lived in Brighton I was like, ‘I hate London. I could never live there, it’s too busy and dirty.’ But now I’m back, I love how busy and dirty it is. I find it exciting.”
Dana continues talking as she pulls
