Coming this week: Lucy Harrison’s multi-layered Carnaby Echoes + Nick Knight’s PUNK at Showstudio
//Clockwise from top left: Cover, Helen And Desire, 1970; George O'Dowd, photo: Richard Bevan, 2013; Carnaby Street book and Palisades swing tag, 1970 and 1966; front cover, Anarchy In The UK newsprint fanzine, 1976//
I’m involved in a couple of events which open in London this week: artist Lucy Harrison’s multi-layered project Carnaby Echoes in the West End and photographer Nick Knight’s exhibition Punk at his Showstudio space in SW1.
A couple of days ago I dropped into 20 Foubert’s Place during Harrison’s install there of the exhibition element of Carnaby Echoes, which kicks off on Thursday (September 5).
//Preparations underway at the venue for the Carnaby Echoes show. The construction work next door is on the site of the club Foubert's, home to such 80s nights as The Batcave//
//Carnaby Echoes exhibition install: Murray's club sign and viewing screen being readied//
//Carnaby Echoes exhibition install: Images from Deal Real open mic nights, including participants Mos Def, Kanye West and Amy Winehouse//
Harrison has researched historical material and collected personal accounts from those who have been associated with addresses in the Carnaby area with musical significance, from Murray’s Cabaret Club, which opened in 1913 at 16-18 Beak Street, to the much-mourned 00s hip-hop mecca Deal Real at 3 Marlborough Court.
She has produced an app and a bookwork, assembled photography and print material and made a set of 13 films featuring such luminaries as Count Suckle and Lloyd Coxsone, respectively sound system operator (with the late Duke Vin) and DJ at the seminal Carnaby Street club The Roaring Twenties, Miranda Sawyer, who worked at the Smash Hits offices at 52-55 in the thoroughfare, and George O’Dowd, who served and styled at the boutiques Street Theatre at 12 Ganton Street and The Foundry in Newburgh Street.
//Carnaby Echoes exhibition install: Exhibits including (right) promotional photo of Count Suckle//
//Carnaby Echoes exhibition install: Print including Graham K. Smith's article in style magazine New Sounds New Styles about The Foundry and (right) Boy George NME cover story shot at the boutique, 1982//
//George O'Dowd talks about Street Theatre outside the premises which housed the boutique in the early 80s. Photo: Richard Bevan//
//Lloyd Coxsone, Denzil Exodus and Mikey Foreigner in Ben Sherman's Carnaby outlet, site of The Roaring Twenties nightclub from the 60s to the 80s. Photo: Richard Bevan//
By uncovering these and other narratives, Harrison has created a fresh view of an area which has been too often saddled in pop culture histories with associations to Swinging London mod and dollybird fashions.
I advised Harrison on premises and people with musical connections and hooked her up with various people, including O’Dowd, Martin Cole, who worked at the late Tommy Roberts’ psychedelic junk shop Kleptomania at 10 Kingly Street, Dudley Edwards of design studio Binder Edwards & Vaughan and Keith Albarn, who ran the important 60s art space 26 Kingly Street (also known as Our Own Gallery) with his wife Hazel, partner Ian Knight and others.
//Among my loans are this swing ticket designed by Pop artist Derek Boshier for his friend Pauline Fordham's Ganton Street boutique Palisades and a rare copy of Tom Salter's Carnaby Street book illustrated by Malcolm English//
//Carnaby Echoes exhibition install: Wall vitrine with print material relating to the Kingly Street gallery and designers Binder Edwards & Vaughn//
//Carnaby Echoes exhibition install: Putting together the handsome listening booths//
//Carnaby Echoes exhibition install: Derek Ridgers photography from The Batcave and other local venues under wraps//
Harrison selected items from my archive for the exhibition, which looks to be shaping up very well; particularly impressive are the HMV Oxford Street-style listening booths loaded with Harrison’s playlist of 100 songs with links to the area.
Across town in SW1, I delivered exhibits to Showstudio for Knight’s exhibition, which springs out of his involvement in this summer’s Punk: Chaos To Couture at the NY Met and has a similar aim to Harrison’s, in that it seeks to liberate Punk from the caricatures which are blighting appreciation of what is increasingly understood as 20th century culture’s bookend to modernism.
//Front cover, The Colt Album, ed., pub. John S. Barrington. Paul Gorman Archive//
//Front cover, Helen And Desire, Alexander Trocchi, Olympia Press, 1970. Paul Gorman Archive//
//Front cover, Anarchy In The UK, Sex Pistols fanzine, 1976. Jamie Reid and others. Paul Gorman Archive//
//Collar detail, Let It Rock shirt, 1974. Paul Gorman Archive//
//Opening pages of Gallery International 1976 feature on Sex and Malcolm McLaren. Paul Gorman Archive//
To that end I am contributing:
• illustrator Jim French’s 1973 compendium The Colt Album, which contains a version of the Longhorn’s Dance drawing used by Malcolm McLaren as the main element in his infamous ‘Cowboys’ t-shirt design;
• an Olympia Press edition of Alexander Trocchi’s erotic pulp novel Helen And Desire, from which McLaren derived the text for his Sex t-shirt ‘I Groaned With Pain…’;
• an original early 70s shirt from McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road boutique Let It Rock;
• The February 1976 edition of Gallery International magazine which contains Sado Sex For The Seventies, David May’s feature on Sex which includes his important interview with McLaren;
• and the copy of the Sex Pistols fanzine Anarchy In The UK which I bought in December 1976 from the newsagents in Goodge Street I frequented at the time for my punk fanzines, copies of NME and packs of Disques Bleu.
If you are in town over the next month or so I thoroughly recommend both of these events, which have been created by individuals interested in broadening understanding of the story of social interaction, popular culture, art and design in the capital over the last century.
Find out more about Carnaby Echoes here and Punk at Showstudio here.