Paul Gorman is…

When David Bowie + Malcolm McLaren simultaneously seeded the 70s by appearing in the same issue of underground paper IT

Jul 31st, 2020

//Box advert for the Beckenham Arts Lab run by David Bowie and Mary Finnigan in IT #59, July 1969//

//News story about the Goldsmiths Arts Festival organised by Malcolm Edwards and his fellow student Niall Martin in IT #59//

Researching my archive during lockdown for a project has given me the opportunity to thoroughly assess individual publications, none more so than the 59th issue of underground paper IT, which hit the streets in early July 1969.

This particular edition features a couple of small items which provide clues as to the countercultural activities at the time of two Londoners who would go on to define pop culture in the 1970s: David Bowie and Malcolm McLaren.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sayonara Martin Stone 1946 – 2016

Nov 10th, 2016

Martin Stone hopped, pre-dawn, through the Cheshire street market, scavenging books. Winklepickers, tourniquet trousers, mildewed beret, bulging swagbag: Blind Pew impersonated by Max Wall. Cigarette grafted to trembling, prehensile fingers, he was an anthology of retro fashion. And in his wake there shimmered a vortex of gossip and, amazingly, goodwill…  Iain Sinclair, The Independent, February 18, 1995

Sad to note the passing of Martin Stone, dapper devil and rock and rolling rare book dealer par excellence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Installation shots from radical art, beat + punk exhibition at John Hansard Gallery

Oct 16th, 2015
efbubx3

//Top: Anarchy Shirt designed by Malcolm McLaren + Vivienne Westwood, 1976. Worn by Sex Pistols acolytes Jordan (Pamela Rooke) and Simon Barker for performances and TV appearances by the group. Private collection. Above left: screening room for Paris Capital Of The XXIst Century, Malcolm McLaren, 2010; right: vitrines and monitors in gallery 2. Photos: Steve Shrimpton//

Hope you enjoy this selection of installation shots from the exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining The Dots From The Situationist International To Malcolm McLaren, currently wowing visitors to Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Opening a great success

Sep 28th, 2015

12042814_10153730132586694_2640006315530201639_n

CP1s9MzW8AAOj-4

//Viewing exhibits in Gallery 2 at John Hansard Gallery. Pic JHG//

The opening of new exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining The Dots From The Situationist International To Malcolm McLaren at the weekend was a great success.

12027538_10153730339916694_154184666241439234_n

//Visitors Nick Abrahams + Suze Malyon with their dog Mrs Shufflewick//

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Modernize your old culture! Be up to date! Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges installation well underway

Sep 23rd, 2015

IMG_8459

DÉTOURNÉD PAINTING

Intended for the public. Easy reading

Collectors and museums,
be modern
If you have old paintings,
do not despair.
Keep your memories
But detourne them
So they correspond to your time
Why reject the old [paintings]
If one can modernize them?
With a few brushstrokes
Modernize your old culture
Be up to date
and distinguished at the same time
Painting is over
Better give it the final blow
Detourne
Long live painting

Asger Jorn, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Rive Gauche, Paris, May 1959. Translation: Young Kim.

Among the pertinent exhibits of our forthcoming show Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges is the statement disavowing traditional approaches to artistic creation made by the Danish artist and writer Asger Jorn in the late 50s.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Installing our exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining the dots from the Situationist International to Malcolm McLaren

Sep 21st, 2015

IMG_8385IMG_8429 IMG_8418
IMG_8415

Today David Thorp and I worked with the team at John Hansard Gallery on the first day of the installation of our forthcoming exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining the dots from the Situationist International to Malcolm McLaren.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Exhibition joining the dots between a group of supreme troublemakers

Aug 18th, 2015

IMG_7790

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges* is the title of the forthcoming exhibition about the creative interplay between a group of remarkable radical artists, poets, writers and activists who initiated, perpetrated and influenced a range of post-war alternatives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I Groaned With Pain: Malcolm McLaren’s own t-shirts to feature in exhibition of status quo-disrupters

Jul 17th, 2015
P1160125

//The t-shirts show the deliberate production of variants within the limited edition designed and written by McLaren and printed on the simple square pattern produced by Vivienne Westwood in 1974. © Malcolm McLaren Estate//

Two of Malcolm McLaren’s t-shirts from the very first production run of I Groaned With Pain – the notorious text design produced with Vivienne Westwood in 1974 – will be featured in Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges, the exhibition I am co-curating with David Thorp at Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery this autumn.

P1160118

//T-shirt with central tear on light blue jersey with exterior seaming, labelled, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, 1974. 360mm x 375mm. © Malcolm McLaren Estate//

I Groaned With Pain is named after the first four words of the paragraph of text McLaren lifted from beat writer Alexander Trocchi’s erotic novel Helen And Desire (published in 1954 by Olympia Press under the pseudonym Francis Lengel).

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bowie Style tonight: In conversation with Boy George at the V&A

Apr 9th, 2013

Tonight I am hosting an event at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum: an ‘in conversation’ with Boy George about the importance and influence of popular culture’s greatest manipulator of visual identity, David Bowie.

//George O'Dowd overlooked by Big Brother in his room at a squatted house in Carburton Street, central London, 1978.//

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

BeatBooks 62: Beat Recordings; Beat Literature; Beat Art

Feb 5th, 2013

//Jacket, Beatbooks 62 from collage by Norman Ogue Mustill, 1967.//

The new Beatbooks catalogue returns Andrew Sclanders to his primary preoccupation with the creative outpourings of the American Beats and their fellow travellers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,