My new book Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press is out in the UK, Europe, Australia and other countries, so I have been active on the promotional front.
Derek Boshier: One (1967) + !Manifesto! (1969)
It’s always a delight to encounter fresh artworks by a favourite artist, and Derek Boshier’s print One from 1967 is no exception.
Christopher Logue Poster Poems at Rob Tufnell September 30 – November 7
One of the exhibitions I’m most looking forward to visiting this autumn is London dealer Rob Tufnell’s presentation of the so-called “poster poems” produced by the late Christopher Logue.
Magick Is Freedom! (After Barney Bubbles) opens in London this week
When I first saw it I was questioning a lot of things, not least my adequacy. Things like inspiration, influences, references . . . where do things come from? Copying things—not as “homage'”or “pastiche”, but dying to get inside a thing. Inhabit it. Nostalgia too. Using machines. Colour. Systems. Perpetual motion. Automatism. Copying things. Graham Wood on Existence Is Unhappiness.
This week sees the London opening of Magick Is Freedom! (After Barney Bubbles), an exhibition of the series of prints made by designer Graham Wood in response to Existence Is Unhappiness, the fold-out poster for the 12th issue of underground magazine Oz published in May 1968 and designed by Barney Bubbles with Sid Squeak and others.
Kate Moross: Make Your Own Luck
The industrious British designer/illustrator Kate Moross is celebrating the publication of her book Make Your Own Luck with a London exhibition surveying the impressive body of work she has assembled to date.
I recommend the book highly, and not just because Moross gracefully thanked me for what little input I may have had. Also, as a fellow dog-lover, it’s great to see that Moross’s beloved Shiba Inus Tako and Ebi are given prominence on the flyleaf.
Photography: David Parkinson shoots Acme Attractions
I’ve been enjoying researching materials relating to the late photographer David Parkinson for a feature for GQ magazine, so thought I’d share some of the images I dug out of the Parkinson archive concerning the 70s King’s Road retro clothing store Acme Attractions.
Parkinson’s position as fashion editor of Paul Raymond’s sophisticated soft-porn magazine Club International enabled him to style and present Acme clothing for a wide readership, on occasion using the shop team as models.
Acme was opened by Parkinson’s friend Stephan Raynor (they’d known each other since they were part of a gang of style-obsessed teenagers in Leicester in the early 60s) with John Krivine, previously a Brixton-based jukebox dealer, in 1974.
Graham Wood on the series of 24 posters inspired by a 1968 design for Oz magazine
Best known as one of the founders of British design collective Tomato, Graham Wood chose a 1968 poster for underground magazine Oz as the wellspring for a series of 24 poster prints.
I corresponded with Wood about the ways in which the original artwork- made by Barney Bubbles and his 60s design partner David Wills with a team of contributors – sparked inspiration for the two dozen A0-size posters, which were exhibited in Stockholm in November 2012.
Beatbooks 61: Communal, alternative and psychedelic living; Peyote; Hippies; Music; Psychedelic & Underground Art; Sixties London; Underground Press
The new Beatbooks catalogue lines up the seminal alongside the obscure, from complete sets of Oz, Ink, Gandalf’s Garden and Suck magazines and Time’s “Swinging London” cover story to Robert E. Brown’s The Psychedelic Guide To Preparation Of The Eucharist, LIFE’s July 1969 study of US communes and a rare poster for the Psycho Circus at the Roundhouse in 1967 in support of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign.
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Talk at the V&A: 60s posters from Pop to Psychedelia
Tomorrow I’m participating in the V&A study day on British design in the 60s with a talk about the development of graphics and poster art during the decade.
I’m speaking at 2.30pm – more details here.
British Posters: Advertising Art & Activism
“People do love huge pieces of paper”.
So runs the quote heading up a section in V&A curator Catherine Flood’s excellent overview British Posters: Advertising Art & Activism, published by the museum to coincide with its multifarious design celebrations this Olympic year.
And it’s true. We do.
Or we all did, when this vital form was simultaneously a mass-medium and a highly personal communications device, when huge promotional budgets and lack of urban controls resulted in the accretive papering of our street-scapes. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, we gave posters pride of place on the walls of our bedrooms, bedsits and sitting rooms.
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