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“As an artist Derek Boshier has never lost his sense of wonder at the world” – David Hockney The publication date of Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-entry – the monograph of the great British artist I have edited – is confirmed as October 5. Published by Thames & Hudson with a preface by David Hockney, Rethink/Re-entry contains […]
Punk had great freedom with no rules. I couldn’t sing, but I got up there and sung. It didn’t matter. You had to have the spirit and the energy. Viva Hamnell, 2014 My first meeting with Viva Hamnell eight years ago was not untypical, I subsequently learnt. 74 at the time, she was viewing the […]
Catch if you can Alistair Sooke’s excellent BBC documentary Pop Go The Women: The Other Story Of Pop Art. Derek Boshier – subject of my next book – is among the interviewees, talking about his contemporary Pauline Boty. Her work, like the other subjects of the programme, has been neglected in the circumscribed narrative of […]
A self-confessed exhibitionist who took the world for his stage and his life for art and theatre, a blank canvas on which to create and display himself without preconceptions or inhibitions. Heavily tattooed and pierced, with his thin waxed moustache jutting forth at a rakish angle, Drako Zarhazar was for many years a familiar figure […]
On Sunday March 30 I’ll be hosting a Q&A with film director Toby Amies (above right) after a screening at the BFI of The Man Whose Mind Exploded, Amies’ heart-rending documentary of the life of the extraordinary Drako Zarharzar (above left). We’ll be talking about Amies’ relationship with Drako, who died during the making of […]
I acquired my first underground press publications in the summer of 1972, at about the point when the sector was taking the nosedive from which it never recovered. Still, better late than Sharon Tate, as they say. Aged 12, my taste had been whetted by sneak peeks at an older brother’s collection of magazines when […]
“Do you know what? I was a no-hoper. Prison was a possibility, you know, an absolute possibility for me. It was probably 50:50 whether I’d end up there or not. “I was considered a failure. I left school, no qualifications, at 15. I’d come bottom of the class in several subjects. I’d gone from one […]
While updating his rich and varied archive, photographer Homer Sykes came across these superb photographs taken inside Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Seditionaries at 430 King’s Road in the spring of 1977. The images capture the air of raw uncertainty surrounding the shop and the McLaren/Westwood coterie in this period. McLaren’s charges the Sex […]
Here’s a cure for year-end cookie-cutter rock-doc fatigue. Basically Johnny Moped, Fred Burns’ exemplary documentary about Paul Halford (aka punk rocker Johnny Moped), has been selected for a week of screenings at London’s ICA. The mini-season kicks off next Tuesday night with a post-film chat and q&a with Moped conducted by Burns. Tickets available here. […]
So potent is the creative legacy of the graphic design master Barney Bubbles – who died on this day 30 years ago – that he is continually cited as an inspiration by contemporary visual communicators, while his name and work is attached to all manner of endeavours. Recently, Bubbles artworks were chosen by the French […]