My next book, The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, is published around the world this summer by Thames & Hudson.
This is the enhanced and revised third edition of my monograph of the late graphic artist, who died in 1983 and would have been 80 this year.
//Back Cover, Jesus Of Cool, Nick Lowe, Radar Records, 1978. Photo: Bob Bromide. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//
//Back cover, Darling Let’s Have Another Baby/Something Else/It Really Digs, Johnny Moped, Chiswick Records, 1978. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//
//Clock, Stiff Records, 1978. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//
//Front, Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy, Billy Bragg, Utility, 1983. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//
“In graphics, in the music business at least, Barney pioneered the use of everyday objects in his work. He could see the design and the beauty in the apparently banal”
Suzanne Spiro, artist
The Barney Bubbles exhibition Optics & Semantics at London gallery Rob Tufnell closes tomorrow evening; if you have a chance, do go along and enjoy the late graphic arts maestro’s unique celebrations of the mundane and workaday.
//AC/DC Desk (with plug stool), Get Happy!! lightbulb poster, ‘Kill Time’ Stiff Records clock + Ian Dury Cocktail cabinet//
You wait years for a Barney Bubbles exhibition and then two come along in the space of a month.
On the heels of the mini-show of Barney Bubbles music designs at Fred Perry’s basement space in Covent Garden comes a different take on the work of the late graphics maestro.
The countdown is on to this years’s most exciting street-style collaboration: the limited edition Barney Bubbles x Fred Perry collection.
//Left: Poster, 30 x 20″, one of a series of four, for Generation X residency at The Marque, Soho, London, September 1977. Right: Poster, 60 x 40″, one of a series of five for Stiff Records package tour of UK, October/November, 1977. Design (c) Barney Bubbles Estate//
//Installation view of Making Music Modern dominated by Bubbles’ Costello poster. Also note his Do It Yourself sleeve and Generation X poster. Photo: John Wronn//
New York’s Museum Of Modern Art is featuring seven works by the late graphics maestro Barney Bubbles in the current exhibition Making Music Modern: Design For The Eye & Ear.
Plus ca change…
Tucked away in the June 1983 edition of The Face was this news story about a brave broadcasting venture, the scabrous and short-lived Breakfast Pirate Radio.
//Proof of front cover of Programme 1 by Station BPR, Utility, 1983. Design: Barney Bubbles.//
Talking Barney Bubbles with Billy Bragg in the Spirit Of 71 Cafe. Photo: Dom Chambers.
I’m going to Glastonbury. The festival, that is.
These aren’t words I anticipated ever typing. It’s good to confound expectations, particularly your own, and now I’m looking forward to it; there will be lots of pals there, and I have a purpose.
I’m going as a “performer”, booked as result of the Barney Bubbles connection (he created an elaborate sleeve to house the triple album Revelations, released to pay the debts accrued from the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre).
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