//Cut The Cost Of Living, UK76, Victor Burgin, 1976//

The work of artist Victor Burgin is undergoing re-appraisal in the light of two forthcoming exhibitions, one of which starts this week.

London’s Richard Saltoun Gallery is marking the 40th anniversary of Burgin’s photo-text series UK76 by presenting the work in its entirety and in the form in which he showed his art in the 1960s and 70s: pasted onto the wall and scraped away at the end of the exhibition.

Meanwhile, in the New Year, John Hansard Gallery – the Southampton space where David Thorp and I staged the recent show Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges – will be mounting an exploration of Burgin’s engagement with the theories of philosopher Roland Barthes.

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Tags: David Thorp, John Hansard Gallery, Richard Saltoun Gallery, Roland Barthes, Ubuweb, UK76, Victor Burgin

Photo: Andrew Bunney.

Earlier this month I gave a talk to foundation year art and design students at Saint Martin’s as part of a brief to deliver work based on their personal opinions and beliefs.

The subject was the 1974 t-shirt You’re Gonna Wake Up One Of These Days And Know Which Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!.

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Tags: Andrew Bunney, BLast, Futurists, Nicola Malkin, Roland Barthes, Saint Martin's, Society for Cutting Up Men, You're Gonna Wake Up

Roland Barthes in his office at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 1963. Henri Cartier Bresson/Magnum.

Interesting to note that Roland Barthes’ “anarchic foam of tastes and distastes” is contemporaneous with You’re Gonna Wake Up. No surprise then that J’aime, je n’aime pas became the starting point for updates and personal interpretations among list-loving binary-fixated bloggers from the mid-Noughties onwards.

Here is a translation of the Great Signifier’s original, complete with coda:

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Tags: 1977, Roland Barthes