//Derek Boshier with his work The Dinner Party. Photo: Marissa Roth//

Next Thursday (October 8) I will be in conversation with artist Derek Boshier at Flowers Gallery in Cork Street in London’s Mayfair.

This marks the publication of Rethink/Re-entry, the Boshier monograph I have edited, as well as the exhibition of the same name I am curating at Flowers with the writer/curator Guy Brett.

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Tags: Cork Street, David Bowie, Flowers Gallery, The Clash

To celebrate today’s opening of the exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining The Dots From The Situationist International To Malcolm McLaren, this rare footage of McLaren talking about the genesis of the bondage trousers design has been issued by the Malcolm McLaren Estate through Dazed Digital.

The film is entitled Subversive Trousers and is from Being Malcolm, which was written and performed by McLaren and produced with Première Heure for Canal Jimmy. The series won a prestigious French TV award.

//From today’s Guardian Guide//

Among the many rare items in the exhibition are materials related to McLaren’s collaboration with graphic artist Jamie Reid, as demonstrated by the exhibits below.

// Sex Pistols -Fuck Forever. Design by Jamie Reid for Great Rock N Swindle, 1979, produced as t-shirt by Reid 1987, with source of image, front cover of Picturegoer, January 1959, and original copy of Leaving The 20th Century, Christopher Gray’s collection of Situationist texts designed by Reid, 1974//

Read Dazed Digital on the show is here .

The Guardian Guide’s preview here.

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges opens today (September 26) and runs until November 14.

Find out more here.

Tags: Being Malcolm, Canal JImmy, Christopher Gray, Great Rock N Swindle, Jamie Reid, John Hansard Gallery, Leaving The 20th Century, Picturegoer, Sex Pistols Fuck Forever

//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.

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Tags: Arts Council Of Great Britain, Clash 2nd Songbook, David Hockney, Flowers Gallery, Guy Brett, Joe Strummer, Lives: An exhibition of artists whose work is based on other peoples' lives, Lodger, Mick Jones, News From The Metropolis, Pennie Smith., Posy Simmonds, RB Kitaj, Steve Johnston

//Poster for Italian release of Alan Freed’s 1956 musical Rock, Rock, Rock!. Photo: John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images//

//Left: Chuck Berry image isolated and bleached out. Right: As it appeared on the t-shirt, worn in this 1973 photograph of singer/songwriter Simon Fisher Turner. Photographer: Unknown//

When they were setting up Let It Rock in 1971, Malcolm McLaren and his original partner in the boutique at 430 King’s Road – Patrick Casey – acquired a cache of posters, showcards and ephemera for 50s rocksploitation movies, including many Continental-language variants.

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Tags: After School Session, Alan Freed, Don't Knock The Twist, Golden Hour Of Rock N' Roll, Harry Foster, Jayne Mansfield, L'Amour Frénétique, Le Cavalier Du Crepuscule, Let's Rock, London Rock N Roll Show, Loving You), Mister Rock And Roll, Patrick Casey, Peter Clifton, Rock, Simon Fisher Turner, Wembley Stadium, You Can't Catch Me

//From top left: Chinese Communist Party pamphlet, 1971; McLaren in Let It Rock 1972; Proclamation by Engels and Marx, 1881; Title lettering, Belgian film poster, 1958//

A year or so ago I established the source material for one of the first designs generated by Malcolm McLaren in the fashion partnership he conducted with Vivienne Westwood in the 70s and early 80s.

Now I can reveal the inspiration: text contained in an unprepossessing Communist booklet celebrating the short-lived “Paris Commune” government of 19th Century revolutionary France.

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Tags: Abbie Hoffman, Chuck Berry, Friedrich Engels, Jerry Lee Lewis, Karl Marx, Let It Rock, Let's Rock, Little Richard, New York Dolls, Paris Commune, Patrick Casey, Peter Clifton, Steal This Book, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Little Red Book, The London Rock N Roll Show, Vive le Rock!, Vivienne Westwood, William Powell, Yvonne Gold

//Lobby card for High School Confidential!, 1958. This is from the opening scene, where Lewis sings the movie’s title track//

Let It Rock was digging in the ruins of past cultures that you cared about. It was giving them another brief moment in the sun. It wasn’t about doing anything new. It was an homage. It was nostalgia.
Malcolm McLaren to Momus, 2002

Forty three years after its creation I can reveal the source of the Jerry Lee Lewis image which appeared on the Let It Rock t-shirt design “The ‘Killer’ Rocks On!”.

It is from a lobby card for Alan Freed’s 1958 rocksploitation flick High Street Confidential!; an original was just one of the pieces of 50s ephemera adorning Let It Rock’s premises at 430 King’s Road in 1972.

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Tags: Alan Freed, Chuck Berry, High School Confidential!, Imogen Hunt, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jeunesse Droguée, Let It Rock, Little Richard, London Rock & Roll Show, Masayoshi Sukita, Momus, Paris Capital Of The 19th Century, Paris Capital of the XXIst Century, Patrick Casey, Screaming Lord Sutch, Shallow 1-21, The 'Killer' Rocks On!, Walter Benjamin, Wembley Stadium