No Future: Malcolm McLaren Art School Tour T-Shirt marks the fact that place where Sex Pistols first played is now a multi-million pound luxury apartment
//Students modelling the McLaren tour t-shirt. Photo: Matthew Cornford//
Art schools are places of possibilities, which is one of the reasons we chose the title Be Reasonable Demand The Impossible for the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first Sex Pistols gig at Central Saint Martins in London’s King’s Cross this Friday (November 6).
Participants John Beck and Matthew Cornford have really entered into the spirit of the occasion by producing No Future, the Malcolm McLaren Art School Tour T-Shirt.
This marks on the back in rock-band style the dates of the late cultural iconoclast’s sojourns at various establishments of further education in and around London in the 60s and early 70s. In this period the student McLaren absorbed knowledge across art, fashion, film, music, politics and social activism which he fed into the multi-media project of disrupting the status quo which became known as Punk.
On the front is an image of the old Saint Martin’s School Of Art in central London’s Charing Cross Road, attended by McLaren and later by Sex Pistols bass-player Glen Matlock, who is also appearing at the event on Friday.
It was Matlock who scored McLaren’s charges the opportunity to make their live debut playing a short set as support act to rock & roll band Bazooka Joe in the upper-storey Common Room at Saint Martin’s on November 6, 1975.
That the modest St Martin’s Common Room is today a multi-million pound penthouse apartment is a commentary on – and condemnation of – what is happening to our capital at the hands of untrammelled property development.
As artists and academics, Beck and Cornford have been concerned about this situation for some time; their book The Art School & The Culture Shed compares the golden age when virtually every British town and local community was served by a vibrant art school with the reduction in arts and education funding, planning failures and the widescale property frenzy which has resulted in their destruction and replacement with giant regional venues of dubious cultural value.
Beck and Cornford will be talking about their t-shirt and the importance of art schools with Jeremy Till, CSM head/pro vice-chancellor of University Of The Arts London, at 7pm on Friday. The shirts are for sale, at £5 a pop, on the night.
There is a lot more going on at Be Reasonable Demand The Impossible – full details here.
To attend you must RSVP here.
** PLEASE NOTE: The t-shirts are only available for sale to buyers in person on the night. Central Saint Martins staff are not handling inquiries about these shirts so please do not contact them. **