Paul Gorman is…

Love goddess Mrs Scully revealed: The Ortonesque court case which informed the Sex t-shirt You’re Gonna Wake Up

Nov 28th, 2017

//From The Times, September 24, 1974. Courtesy Matthew Worley//

//Mrs Scully features on the “right” side of the shirt after a reference to George Dangerfield’s book The Strange Death Of Liberal England//

//A 1970s issue of Mistress magazine//

I’m grateful to British academic Matthew Worley for having enlightened me as to the identity of “Mrs Scully”, whose name was among those printed on the You’re Gonna Wake Up us-and-them t-shirt first sold in Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974.

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Curious, humorous and anonymous: Ian Harris’s Argos art postcard interventions

Feb 18th, 2017

/A selection of the 60 appended cards Harris placed in London art gallery and museum shops. No reproduction without permission//

//The Death Of Marat, Jacques-Louis David, 1793. No reproduction without permission//

//Charles I, Daniel Mytens, 1631. Card from National Portrait Gallery. No reproduction without permission//

Ian Harris is a man of many parts, having been at various stages in his life a successful graphic artist, fashion designer, homewares retailer and musician/performer, notably with late 60s blues-rock group The Earth and as his mod revival alter ego Terry Tonik.

Just this week Harris let me in on a curious, humorous and anonymous public intervention series he staged in London galleries and museums a few years back.

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Exclusive: Gay orgy Pleasure Chest t-shirt Malcolm McLaren détourned into shocking Joe Orton/Warriors/punk design classic

Apr 11th, 2016
PUYE - original580

//T-shirt purchased by Malcolm McLaren at The Pleasure Chest, Los Angeles in January 1978. Private collection/Malcolm McLaren Estate. Photo: Paul Gorman Archive. No reproduction without permission//

Untitled copy

//Prick Up Your Ears, t-shirt design, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood for Seditionaries, 1979. Courtesy: Hiroshi Fujiwara Collection//

The trickster’s function is to add disorder to order, and so make a whole; within the fixed bounds of what’s permitted, an experience of what is not permitted.

Karl Kerenyi quoted in Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography Of Joe Orton, John Lahr, 1978

In January 1978, after the break-up of the Sex Pistols in San Francisco on the last date of the group’s ill-fated US tour, their manager Malcolm McLaren shifted base to Los Angeles for a few weeks to work out his next move.

Discussing options with record companies and holding meetings with movie companies to drum up business for biopic The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, the late McLaren had a ball, staying at the legendary rock’n’roll hang-out The Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard, hard by Duke’s Coffee Shop and a few blocks west of the sex shop The Pleasure Chest.

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