Later this month I will be in conversation with British menswear legend Mark Powell at the V&A’s Sartorial Style day.
London
Before We Were Men: With David Gwinnutt, John Maybury, Ian Massey + Jeffrey Hinton at the National Portrait Gallery on March 23
I am one of the guests of the photographer David Gwinnutt at an event being staged next month to coincide with the opening of his forthcoming exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery.
Before We Were Men showcases Gwinnutt’s documentation – with hand-held camera and exclusive use of natural light – of creative London in the 1980s. Among his subjects were the designer/performance artist Leigh Bowery, artists Cerith Wyn Evans, Duggie Fields, Gilbert & George and Grayson Perry and dancer/choreographer Michael Clark.
My first concert: Count Basie and Frank Sinatra at the Royal Festival Hall, May 1970
I am fortunate enough to be able to state that the first live music concert I attended was the midnight double bill of Frank Sinatra and The Count Basie Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall in May 1970.
I was 10 years old. My resourceful mother wangled tickets for the entire family, with one of my sisters selling programmes. That gained her access to the artists’ area; she gave me the backstage pass which I duly placed in the school project autobiography I wrote the following year.
Sweet relief in design + anti-design: Josef Frank at FTM + Make It Real at DKUK
Sweet relief from travails personal and political was provided last night by visits to openings of two contrasting yet similarly satisfying creative endeavours in our great capital.
Continue reading Sweet relief in design + anti-design: Josef Frank at FTM + Make It Real at DKUK
Eight Young Photographers: The poster
As a follow-up to my last post, here is the stunning poster for Eight Young Photographers, the third exhibition to be held at the Photographers Gallery (which opened at its original premises in central London’s Great Newport Street at the beginning of 1971).
The image has been provided by Mark Trompeteler, who was one of the participants along with talents such as the late David Parkinson then on the rise during the period when appreciation of photography as a form of artistic expression was beginning to take hold.
Says Trompeteler: “The silhouette of the photographers with the elongated legs was created by Tim Stephens, one of the exhibitors and one of my classmates back then at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communications).
“He tilted the back of a 5×4 camera in order to create the image. The Photographers Gallery organised the finished poster with the typography on top.”
Read about Mark’s work here.
Reissued: The Look Of London – charting fashion x music in the greatest city in the world
I’m delighted to announce that my map The Look Of London – which teases out the intertwining of popular music and street style in our capital over five decades – has been reissued by groovy guide makers Herb Lester Associates.
Long Live The Soho Dead: Ghosts of Le Macabre haunt Robert Rubbish’s exhibition Spiritus Soho Volume Zero
“When I started working as the Saturday boy at Let It Rock (in 1973), Malcolm McLaren used to take me around these strange places which played a part in early rock & roll. One time we went to Le Macabre. I don’t know how he knew about it, but it was the real thing. The tables were coffin lids and the jukebox only had songs to do with death.”
Glen Matlock, interview transcript for The Look, 2000.
A chance encounter on eBay spurred artist Robert Rubbish into creating one of the key elements of his current exhibition Spiritus Soho Volume Zero.
Rubbish – who is one of many mourning the recent death of his friend and documentary subject, the poet Jock Scot – is known for deep associations with central London’s Soho, and has celebrated its sleazy past and uneasy present in his own work and with the other members of the art collective Le Gun.
Photography in a period of transition: London’s creative community captured down the decades in David Gwinnutt’s Portraits Trouvés
Photographer David Gwinnutt’s new show Portraits Trouvés at north London estate agency Currell provides documentation of the drastic transformation of our city through portraiture of some of the leading lights in arts and culture from the 80s to the 10s.
Laurie Cunningham: Back in the Sunday Times with a major biography and a blue plaque on the way
I’m really pleased for writer/photography editor Dermot Kavanagh. His tireless championing of the late soulboy footballer Laurie Cunningham is paying off with a major piece in today’s Sunday Times’ Style magazine and news that there is to be a blue plaque marking the sportsman’s North London birthplace.
One to watch: Duke Brooks’ compelling film captures the creation of Claire Barrow’s painted canvas couture
Watch out for Duke Brooks’ film documenting artist/designer Claire Barrow’s painting of two 15-metre canvases from which she cut couture garments for her AW16 collection.