British artist Paul Kindersley has produced a bewitching small publication which is available now from his Twitter account.
Shipwreck Of The Fake Fairies is 12 pages with 10 b&w illustrations and continues the themes of Kinderley’s recent work, including the performances Fake Fairy Fantasies and Ship Of Fools and his film The Burning Baby.
Limited to 100 in A5 format on 300gsm paper, each is signed and hand numbered.
Copies of Shipwreck Of The Fake Fairies are £10 each inc p&p.
London antique dealer James Jackson is currently presenting an Instagram exhibition of a folio of new works by the British artist Robert Rubbish.
Farfouiller dans Les Archives (Rummaging in the archives) consists of 10 original A3 artworks; James is posting one work daily on his IG account.
//The artist at bay//
“In the summer of 2019, I started making a collection of works inspired by stills from the French New Wave films I was watching,” explains Rubbish. “They are mostly of couples in cafes; I liked the idea of juxtaposing words onto them like subtitles, using 1980s pop song lyrics.
//”I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met you”. Robert Rubbish, 2021//
“The text was translated from English to French using Googletranslate. The results became profound, existential (or profoundly existential?) and sometimes absurd.”
Jackson has exhibited Rubbish’s work previously at his premises in Fulham, west London. “Robert will return with an old school gallery type exhibition of new and inspired works at James Jackson in Lillie Rd as and when circumstances allow,” adds Jackson.
//The postcard, which measures 230 x 150mm (6 x 9in), is printed in a numbered limited edition of 150//
“Fashion seemed to be the place where music and art came together. Creating my own clothes was like jumping into the musical end of painting. The shop became a natural extension of my studio.”
Malcolm McLaren. The Look, 2001.
Featuring a rare portrait of Malcolm McLaren displaying his wares inside the recently opened Let It Rock in January 1972, this limited edition large-size postcard is a companion to my biography of the man published earlier this year.
The photograph on the front of the card was taken by the late David Parkinson, who documented the refurb of the premises at 430 King’s Road carried out by McLaren and his art school friend Patrick Casey; the address had previously housed Trevor Myles’ Americana boutique Paradise Garage.
//The postcard arrives clad in black, McLaren’s favourite anti-colour. “Black expressed the denunciation of the frill,” he wrote in the introduction to my book The Look//
The card shows McLaren revealing the detail on a flamboyant drape jacket made to his design by the East End tailor Sid Green, while he is surrounded by the accessories and ephemera which constituted Let It Rock’s environmental installation. Against the black walls, Day-glo socks from Whitechapel wholesaler Kornbluth vie with Frederick Starke red rockabilly shirts, Sun Records 45s, French rocksploitation movie posters and deadstock clothing.
It makes for a beguiling image: the 25-year-old – then still legally Malcolm Edwards – is caught making the leap from art school to fashion retailing by, as he later described it, “jumping into the musical end of painting”.
Limited edition numbered postcard hand-numbered and printed 4/1 col. offset on 350gsm single sided board stock, trimmed to size.
Printing: Something Else.
Price: £12.50 each or £20 for 2. P+P: £5 UK, £10 rest of the world. All postage with tracking and/or signature.
I have an essay in the Stone Island monograph Storia which is published today by Rizzoli Books.
Edited by Eugene Rabkin of StyleZeitgeist and art-directed by the supreme Simon Foxton, Storia is an extremely handsome volume featuring texts by Angelo Flaccavento and Jian Deleon, as well as my piece, From The Streets To The Stadium, which traces the Italian label’s place in popular culture.
Storia is available from all good booksellers – a special edition has been published in a slipcase with a poster.
This is available from Stone Island stores around the world, but hurry; within a few hours of publication I’ve been hearing tales that it has sold out in certain territories.
To coincide with the US release of my book The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren I’m taking part in an online event hosted by Atlanta’s premier independent bookstore A Capella next Thursday (September 24).
From 6pm EST (11pm BST) I will be in conversation with US music journalist Chad Radford about McLaren and his creative legacy. Our chat will be followed by a q&a session.
I’ve already signed a bunch of personalised bookplates for those purchasing copies directly from A Cappella.
Look forward to digitally seeing you there – more details from A Cappella.
The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren is available to buy in the US from next week from all good booksellers as well as amazon.com.
In response to inquiries about signed copies of The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren, I’m offering the socially distanced solution: I’m happy to send signed adhesive bookplates (personalised if you like) gratis anywhere in the world.
Send your postal address to my contact address stating whether you want a random or personalised message, and I’ll send you your very own bookplate.
The photo at the top of this post shows variants I have already signed for the virtual event being staged by Atlanta’s A Capella Books next month. I’ll post about that and other US activities coinciding with the book’s American release on September 22 in the coming weeks.
//Musician Sam Parkin sports the Teenburger Designs t-shirt//
Infused with the personal freedoms and camaraderie experienced on a trip to San Francisco, the graphic artist Barney Bubbles (born Colin Fulcher 1942; died 1983) took occupation of the three-storey building at 307 Portobello Road in 1969 and transformed it into a creative commune at the heart of the Notting Hill counterculture.
With musicians rehearsing in the basement and a shifting set of unusual and interesting inhabitants and collaborators, Bubbles established his Teenburger Designs studio on the ground floor of 307 and set about servicing all manner of clients from livery for posh grocer Justin de Blank to record sleeves and posters for such rock, raga and prog groups as Brinsley Schwarz, Cressida, Gracious!, Quintessence and Red Dirt.
//Bubbles checks Justin de Blank artwork at Teenburger Designs, 1970////Teenburger Designs letterhead, March 1969//
Bubbles styled his Teenburger letterhead as a square wrapper with one side featuring a composition of Letraset fragments arranged in the form of a hamburger.
From today, this very limited edition shirt is available in S, M, L + XL and celebrates the brilliance of Barney Bubbles, evoking his wish for “a groovy scene… with lots of hard work and fun play”.
The new issue of Arena Homme + – which is available to read through Exact Editions here for those who can’t obtain physical copies – includes a 28-page extravaganza on Malcolm McLaren’s activities across cinema, fashion and music during the mid-80s.
With an extract from my new biography of McLaren, the feature homes in on Fashion Beast, the unrealised film collaboration with Britain’s dark magus of comic book writing Alan Moore. It also includes my interview with Moore as well as an ingenious fashion story photographed by Drew Vickers and styled by Tom Guinness.
Tomorrow night (April 14) I was supposed to be appearing at London’s regular event Word In Your Ear, the live successor of the much-missed The Word magazine founded by publishing titans Mark Ellen and David Hepworth.
//Smash Hits, January 6-19, 1983//
In the era of social distancing Mark and David have come up with the online Word In Your Attic, the results of which are posted on Youtube. For the episode to coincide with the publication of my Malcolm McLaren biography they asked me talk about 10 objects relating to McLaren from my archive.
Small is beautiful when it comes to the inventive mini-edition of The Gentlewoman, a greatest hits package celebrating the exemplary British magazine’s “10 years of fabulousness”.
During that time (after all print had been roundly declared as “dead” in 2010), editor Penny Martin and her team have consistently confounded expectations around independent print publishing and the traditional editorial stances of periodicals aimed at female readers.
