This morning I am participating in the V&A’s study day From Biba To Topshop with a presentation on the rise and fall of boutique culture in London’s King’s Road, starting with the opening of Bazaar by Archie Nairn, Alexander Plunket-Green and Mary Quant at 138a in 1955 and closing with the establishment of World’s End at 430 by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.

More details here.

Tags: Alexander Plunket Green, Archie Nairn, Bazaar, From BIba To Topshop, Malcolm McLaren, Mary Quant, V&A, Vivienne Westwood

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.

Tags: V&A

//Kiss Kiss, Go To Work On An Egg, Christopher Logue + Tom Salter, 1968.//

//Go To Work On An Egg, Mather & Crowther, 1964.//

“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.

//Top left: Your Britain, Fight For It Now, Abram Games, 1942. Right: Keep Death Off The Road, Carelessness Kills, William Little, 1949.//

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Tags: Abram Games, As You Like It, Carateles la Candelaria, Catherine Flood, Christopher Logue, Eduardo Paolozzi, Hapshash And The Coloured Coat, John Morris, Ken Briggs, Lissitzky, M&C Saatchi, Mather & Crowther, Mike McInnerney, Richard Hollis, See Red Women's Workshop, Society Of Revisionist Typographers, Tom Salter, Typoretum, UFO, V&A, William Little

I have a piece on the inclusion of Barney Bubbles in the V&A’s British Design 1948-2012 exhibition in the new issue of Blueprint magazine.

For the full page go here.

Read my summary of the exhibition catalogue here.

Visit Blueprint’s site here.

Tags: Blueprint, British Design: 1948-2012, V&A

Ian Dury With Love, 60in x 40in poster, 1977.

I sourced this incredible large-scale Barney Bubbles-designed poster from a private collection for the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition British Design: 1948-2012.

Chris Breward, co-curator with Ghislaine Wood, credits my 2010 exhibition Process (which focused on Bubbles’ working practices) for having persuaded the V&A to foreground the work of the late graphic designer in the new show.

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Tags: British Design: 1948-2012, Chris Breward, Ghislaine Wood, Ian Dury, Process: The Working Practices Of Barney Bubbles, V&A

Grace Jones maternity dress 1979 © Jean-Paul Goude.

Here is a selection of images from the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990. In pursuit of this slippery-to-define movement, curators Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt have settled on the defining principles of quotation and bricolage (assemblage from diverse elements).

As a result they have mixed and matched disciplines, categories and scale in their line-up of 250 exhibits, ranging from a reconstruction of Hans Hollein’s 1980 Venice Biennale facade The Presence Of The Past to graphics for record sleeves by Barney Bubbles, Neville Brody and Peter Saville.

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Tags: Andy Warhol, Charles Jencks, Cindy Sherman, Derek Jarman, Glenn Adamson, Grace Jones, Hans Hollein, Helmut Newton, Jane Pavitt, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Anderson, neville Brody, New Order, Peter Saville, Philip Johnson, Ray Petri, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Ron Arad, s David Byrne, Talking Heads, The Face, V&A