//Cover artwork by Boshier, incorporating references to his 1973 installation Change and a portrait by his friend, Nigel Waymouth//
In January 2012, on a cold night in a print studio in, of all places, Wandsworth, south London, the eminent artist Derek Boshier asked me if I was interested in putting together a monograph of his life’s work with his friend and champion, the writer and curator Guy Brett.
As part of the BBC Four Goes Pop season, the British TV channel is running a 45-sec ident commissioned from Derek Boshier.
//The Dance, from the series News From The Metropolis, Derek Boshier, 2014. Ink and collage on paper//
//From Best Foot Forward, Derek Boshier, 2014. Film//
To coincide with the publication of the Derek Boshier monograph Rethink/Re-entry, writer/curator Guy Brett and I are putting together an exhibition of the same name which will be held at Flowers Gallery in Cork Street, Central London this autumn.
Film-maker Zara Hayes has captured the British artist Derek Boshier’s wit, intelligence and apparently boundless creative energy in her documentary for the BBC strand What Do Artists Do All Day?.
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.
//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.
//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).
This is a very nice short made by producer/editor Tulip Tappenden at Derek Boshier’s Los Angeles studio in 2013:
Derek Boshier: An artist at his studio. from TulipT on Vimeo.
It includes many of the works featured in the forthcoming monograph Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-entry, which is published by Thames & Hudson in October and features a foreword by David Hockney.
Order your copy here.
Tonight (June 19) witnesses a private view for the inaugural exhibition at Bohemia Club in the south coast town of St Leonard’s-on-Sea.
//Explanatory text panel which appeared on the inside cover of Icteric No. 2 with 2004 note, from King Mob: A Critical Hidden History//
//Extract of text on 1974 t-shirt by Bernie Rhodes, Malcolm McLaren and Gerry Goldstein//
A few years ago I attempted a dissection of the intriguing elements of the culture-shock t-shirt You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!, produced by Bernie Rhodes, Malcolm McLaren and Gerry Goldstein for sale in Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974.
In You’re Gonna Wake Up, the declamatory tone, aggressive punctuation, satirical bite and use of basic typographical emphases such as the repeated forward slash and random capitalised text combined to detonate a densely packed cultural device.
//16 Situations in vitrine at Land Marks. Photo: Jasper Weinstein Sheffield//
I’m pretty late with this but there are still three or so weeks to go, so, if you have the opportunity, I recommend a visit to Hauser + Wirth Somerset, home until June 21 of the contemplative and poised exhibition Land Marks: Structures For A Poetic Universe.
Curated by historians Nicholas Olsberg and Markus Lähteenmäki, Land Marks presents 100 architectural studies and works constituting an investigation into the boundaries between sculpture and architecture and landscapes and cities.
The spell-binding space at Durslade Farm outside the village of Bruton provides the perfect setting; I am thrilled that the curators included Derek Boshier’s quizzical 1971 work 16 Situations.
| Paul Gorman is a writer. This is his blog: art, books, conversation, cults, dancing, design, encounters, environments, events, film, galleries, groups, individuals, invitations, magazines, music, opinions, performance, photography, places, press, privacy, spaces, style, thoughts + views. |
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