It was a particularly cold February evening, when I arrived at Forest Hill station for the first time. I of course pulled out my iphone as a way of navigation, to find I only had 10% battery left. Quickly checking and memorising my route, I headed towards Luke Pell’s house. His cosy warm abode seemed like it had been built just for him. It was decorated with old pictures and handmade cushions and stunk of ‘I’m an artist’. Trying to keep my own nerves at bay (this was to be my first interview), Luke admitted he was apprehensive, as he poured himself a ginger beer. He put on ‘This is Kit’ for a bit of background noise and then we began.

Let's talk straight away about your upcoming workshops with Rachel Gomme at Chisenhale Dance Space. Why the title Listening Space, A Resource for Makers?

I think we are both aware that there's often a feeling that we have to keep on making. We are always creating work to make a product and particularly as an independent artist, you're looking for funding pots and platforms and not necessarily having the space to think about just exploring for the sake of exploring. Checking where you're at. It's kind of a hand to mouth business or a hand to mouth process, when you're trying to establish yourself as a practitioner.

How did you and Rachel get together?

We both did our MA in Performance at Queen Mary. I think quite early on, Rachel and I both saw things that we found interesting in each other’s practice. We shared similar feelings about where we were in our careers and the rationale behind why we were doing an MA at that time in our lives. It was really great to collaborate with each other. My work is very often, nearly always, about collaboration rather than working independently.

What made you go back to studying at this point of your career?

I felt had lost touch with my artistic practice. I hadn’t taken my inner artist on many dates and I needed to be disciplined enough to create a space for my own work.

How was it?

It was tough. I found it really hard. Juggling work and having been out of education along with not thinking at that particular academic level. Having been working within the arts sector, essentially within the mainstream away from the more experimental work, I was in a really different place to a lot of people, who had either been working in experimental performance or who had just graduated. They were able to really engage with the moment and enjoy the process of making and exploring, without thinking about how that might be outside.

You've produced work with Marc Brew, Candoco and Shobana Jeyasingh, how does it feel for the first time to be delivering workshops and creating work with just your name on it? It must feel quite refreshing. Or is it scary?

Working with other people and supporting other people, to really think about where they want their work to be and how to present it, has made me reflect on my own work. It has given me a really clear sense of where I want to place my work and who I want to work with. I’d say that’s probably the thing that’s really exciting about now, that I have met artists that I really want to work with. People whose practice resonates with me and who I know I could collaborate with. That excites me. But yes, it's scary.

In your dream of dreams who would you like to work with?

People who I think are remarkable are David Harradine from Fevered Sleep, Frank Bock and Simon Vincenzi. I think their work is extraordinary.

Some people would argue that putting your own life on stage makes for uncomfortable watching. But this is how you like to create work right?

Yes, autobiography has always been a starting point for me. Usually my work is about relationships, because I'm interested in people and our relationship with one another. I use autobiography for people to relate to. I try very hard for my work to cease to be about me and to be about shared experiences, or the potential of shared experiences. We've all, well most people, experienced loss or love or desperation or joy. Part of my process, and I’m not sure if I ever get it right, is about selecting what's not going to exclude or alienate an audience, finding what will resonate with people and strike a chord that might make them think about the relationships in their life. It doesn't come from me wanting to tell my story. I think it's always about the interaction of people, rather than 'this happened to me'.

On your myspace page you talk about revealing the beautiful in the everyday and mundane?

What's interesting to me is a sense of transformation, that shift from ordinary and mundane day to day things into being extraordinary and beautiful. A lot of my work starts with objects. There's something about the starting point of a tactile object, an everyday domestic object. So as well as encounters with people, I'm interested in the traces of people and objects and the traces of humanity left on the world around us.

Growing up and dreaming of becoming something within the entertainment industry, we all live in an air of a self-created illusion. Can you remember the first time your expectation of the industry was challenged?

I think I fell into performance. I wasn’t one of those kids who always wanted to dance or act or sing. When I was six, I probably asked my mum if could I do ballet classes and she said 'no', but I could go to scouts. I was way too scared to go to scouts, because I was a big queer even at the age of six, so I did things after school like textiles and art. I can remember at eleven or thirteen, wanting a big part in the school musical, my drama teacher decided I would be Oliver. I was tone deaf, but I was made to sing in front of the whole school. That really knocked my confidence and I kind of gave up on drama and performance. I went on to do visual art and worked in fashion for a while. Whilst I was working in fashion, I used to create personas and identities and go out like that in clubs and parties. I ended up doing performances in clubs with some friends and then someone said to me, 'you should do performing arts'. So I did. I had no clue of what I was getting in to.

That's probably the best way to do it, ha.