‘A complete environment’: Patrick Casey and Malcolm McLaren’s installation at Let It Rock in Ben Kelly’s 111 Inspirational Interiors exhibition
//Interior, 430 King’s Road, west London, designed by Patrick Casey and Malcolm McLaren for the retail outlet Let It Rock and photographed by David Parkinson in January 1972. No reproduction without permission//
I have elected the above image for inclusion in the exhibition 111 Inspirational Interiors, which opens tomorrow in the Windows Gallery 1 at Central Saint Martins in Kings Cross, north London.
The show is curated by designer Ben Kelly in his role as chair of interior and spatial design at University of the Arts London as part of his project Popular Culture And The Interior; the 1972 David Parkinson photograph stems from my participation in Kelly’s ICA symposium last year, Dead Or Alive – Interior Design.
For the exhibition, Kelly invited 111 people to contribute “an image of an interior that has been important and influential in their creative and intellectual development”. The image I chose was taken on the completion of the refurbishment of the ground floor of 430 King’s Road from the premises of boutique Paradise Garage into Teddy Boy culture emporium Let It Rock in late 1971 by the late Malcolm McLaren and his fellow former Harrow Art School student Patrick Casey.
//Detail: Copies of 50s and 60s magazines with promo photo of the Sun Records’ Million Dollar Quartet on original coffee table. From photo by David Parkinson. No reproduction without permission//
Casey had recently left Chelsea College Of Art while McLaren had exited Goldsmith’s, and their new venture was planned not just as a retail outlet but as an environmental installation, as McLaren recalled in the 90s.
“On leaving art school – where my attitudes to work, life, politics and art crystallised – I was presented with the challenge of taking the methodology I had learned there into the ‘real world”,” he said. “But rather than adapting myself to the world around me, with Patrick’s help I adapted reality to my own vision. 430 King’s Road offered the possibilities I needed, and I understood that an alternative environment seen through fashion could be an extension of art school. The street became the studio and people became my artistic medium. This was the origin of my approach – the search for the authentic – which remained consistent in all my work to follow.
//Detail: Glass cabinet containing jewellery, scarves and jars of Brylcreem is completed by colourful nylon ruffles, a pair of flute-topped Frederick Freed Puss In Boots and a decorative plate dedicated to British rocker Screaming Lord Sutch. From photo by David Parkinson. No reproduction without permission//
//Detail: Original stock wallpaper acquired in south London with glass vase surrounded by nylon ruffles and sound equipment, including a hefty radiogram. From photo by David Parkinson. No reproduction without permission//
“So, at Let It Rock we sold original radios, memorabilia, 50s clothes, all as a way of living yesterday tomorrow. It was designed by Patrick and I to look like a 50s working class living room, maybe that inhabited by a Ted and his girlfriend. It was a complete environment.”
111 Interiors showcases contributions from students, staff, alumni and invited speakers, ranging from environmental and exhibition designer Dinah Casson, poet John Cooper Clarke and advertising giant John Hegarty to curator Catherine Ince, artists Lucy McKenzie and Gavin Turk, design authority Alice Rawsthorn, designer Peter Saville, professor of architecture, head of CSM and UAL pro vice chancellor Jeremy Till, writer/musician David Toop (who is London College Of Communication’s chair of audio culture) and writer/commentator Peter York.
111 Inspirational Interiors opens tomorrow (April 14) and runs until April 29. More details here.