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.
//Interior, 430 King’s Road, west London, designed by Patrick Casey and Malcolm McLaren for the retail outlet Let It Rock and photographed by David Parkinson in January 1972. No reproduction without permission//
I have elected the above image for inclusion in the exhibition 111 Inspirational Interiors, which opens tomorrow in the Windows Gallery 1 at Central Saint Martins in Kings Cross, north London.
The show is curated by designer Ben Kelly in his role as chair of interior and spatial design at University of the Arts London as part of his project Popular Culture And The Interior; the 1972 David Parkinson photograph stems from my participation in Kelly’s ICA symposium last year, Dead Or Alive – Interior Design.
For the exhibition, Kelly invited 111 people to contribute “an image of an interior that has been important and influential in their creative and intellectual development”. The image I chose was taken on the completion of the refurbishment of the ground floor of 430 King’s Road from the premises of boutique Paradise Garage into Teddy Boy culture emporium Let It Rock in late 1971 by the late Malcolm McLaren and his fellow former Harrow Art School student Patrick Casey.
Earlier this year I participated in a symposium on interior design and pop culture at London’s Institute Of Contemporary Arts.
//Ben Kelly underneath the Sex sign, 1975. Photo courtesy Ben Kelly//
I’m featuring this image of designer Ben Kelly in his persona of The Photo Kid in my presentation about the design history of 430 at the symposium Dead Or Alive: Popular Culture & The Interior, which takes place today at London’s ICA.
//Portfolio shot of the newly completed Seditionaries, 430 King’s Road, London SW10, December 1976.
(c) Ben Kelly//
Interior Design: Dead Or Alive is the title of the symposium being organised by the prominent British designer Ben Kelly at London’s Institute Of Contemporary Arts on March 14.
I am a contributing speaker alongside writer/curator Michael Bracewell, designers Fred Deakin, Ed Barber & Jay Osgerby and Peter Saville, artists Lucy McKenzie and Bridget Smith and David Toop of the London College Of Communications and Tate Britain’s Andrew Wilson.
“We’re going to be taking stock of the ways in which iconic interiors affect and influence the direction of popular culture and the wider world,” says Kelly, who is putting the event together in his capacity as professor of interior design and spatial studies at the University of the Arts London.
//Portfolio shot of the freshly installed Seditionaries name plaque, December 1976. (c) Ben Kelly//
Among Kelly’s designs was the November 1976 transformation of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Sex at 430 King’s Road into Seditionaries. Knowing that I have researched and produced a substantial document on the history of 430 King’s Road, Kelly has asked me to address this little space with a big impact in terms of its importance as a cultural hub and incubator of often radical ideas.
//Selection of poster prints Graham Wood made for Magick Is Freedom! (After Barney Bubbles)//
Best known as one of the founders of British design collective Tomato, Graham Wood chose a 1968 poster for underground magazine Oz as the wellspring for a series of 24 poster prints.
I corresponded with Wood about the ways in which the original artwork- made by Barney Bubbles and his 60s design partner David Wills with a team of contributors – sparked inspiration for the two dozen A0-size posters, which were exhibited in Stockholm in November 2012.
Grace Jones maternity dress 1979 © Jean-Paul Goude.
Here is a selection of images from the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990. In pursuit of this slippery-to-define movement, curators Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt have settled on the defining principles of quotation and bricolage (assemblage from diverse elements).
As a result they have mixed and matched disciplines, categories and scale in their line-up of 250 exhibits, ranging from a reconstruction of Hans Hollein’s 1980 Venice Biennale facade The Presence Of The Past to graphics for record sleeves by Barney Bubbles, Neville Brody and Peter Saville.
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