British fashion designer John Alexander Skelton’s preview of his latest collection at the ancient Fleet Street watering hole Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was a sensually overloaded and eerie delight.
Continue reading A sense of unease: John Alexander Skelton’s Collection VI
I’m extremely grateful to artist/designer/photographer Ash Hudson for sending precious photographs and design sketches from the archive of his late mother Ola Hudson, the super-talented fashion designer and costumier best known for providing David Bowie with the formal yet other-worldly collection of garments he wore in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth and as The Thin White Duke on the subsequent Isolar world tour.
Continue reading Tribute to Ola Hudson: The Woman Who Fell To Earth
There were more 150 art schools in this country in the mid-1960s. Most of them are now closed or absorbed into other institutions and the buildings repurposed, remodelled or demolished. What did it mean to have an art school in every town and what can we learn by discovering their fate?
Exhibition notes for The Art Schools Of North West England, 2018
I’m playing catch-up, having been distracted by a big project, but wanted to plug this great exhibition which is on at Liverpool’s prestigious gallery Bluecoat until March next year.
Stacia Blake, the artist and performer best known for her association with Hawkwind, has produced a new t-shirt, poster and postcard featuring an amazing design by the legendary Barney Bubbles
Continue reading Miss Stacia x Barney Bubbles T-shirts, posters and postcards available now
Next month British artists David Stephenson and Josh Stapleton’s music project Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band releases a limited edition double vinyl album to coincide with the opening of the exhibition of the same name at London gallery Gazelli Art House.
The show, curated by Stephenson and Gazelli’s Mila Askarova, celebrates the life and work of the art dealer Robert Fraser, the “Groovy Bob” of pop culture legend who represented cutting edge artists from the 1960s to the 80s.
Housed in a handsome gatefold sleeve designed by the great British artist Derek Boshier, the limited edition record features tracks dedicated not just to Fraser but also the constellation of artists in his firmament, including Boshier himself (on the track An Englishman in LA), Jean-Michel Basquiat (Samo), Brian Clarke (Dangerous Visions Of Brian Clark), Keith Haring (Keith Haring’s Pop Shop) and Ed Ruscha (I Want To Hang Out With Ed Ruscha).
Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band is available from January 10 from Gazelli Art House. Order copies here.
The exhibition runs from January 11 to February 23, 2019. Details here.
Harriet Vyner’s must-read biography of Fraser is available here.
The third edition of Scott King and Matt Worley’s CRASH! has arrived. Entitled Nostalgia For The Jet Age, it is an “exhibition in a box” which coincides with an actual exhibition of the same name currently being held at Scotland’s Timespan.
Continue reading KRAŜO! 3: Nostalgio Por La Jeto-Aĝo estas skatolo de lertaĵoj *
In November 1971, design legend Barney Bubbles produced a typically audacious promotional item for Hawkwind’s recently released album X In Search Of Space.
Continue reading Cut it out: The astounding story behind Barney Bubbles’ Hawkwind Galactic Tarot
When he was growing up in Minneapolis in the 1950s, the painter Duncan Hannah’s father advised him: “You never know what kind of squirrel cage a man goes home to at the end of the day.”
Hannah’s book 20th Century Boy allows the reader full access to the squirrel cage inhabited by this charming man in 1970s New York.
Continue reading An unblinking look inside the squirrel cage: Duncan Hannah’s 20th Century Boy
Tonight’s DJ appearance at Manhattan’s’ Soho Grand by the city’s clubland legend Richard Boch – who will be joined on the decks by none less than Fab 5 Freddy and Club 57’s Dany Johnson – affords an opportunity to champion one of my favourite books of the year.
Boch’s The Mudd Club is a visual and literary orgy of delight, packed full of striking images and tales of glory and excess from the late 70s/early 80s nightclub where he was the kingpin doorman and communed on many levels with the good, the bad, the deviant and the simply deranged of popular culture.
You want to know how David Bowie corralled Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi to back him on Saturday Night Live? Read it here, along with hundred of other yarns to make your hair stand on end.
Gossipy and jaw-dropping with a tone which is by turns sardonic and dewy-eyed for times long gone, The Mudd Club is a must-have.
The Mudd Club is published by Feral House; copies available here.
Festivities at the Soho Grand’s Club Room, 310 W Broadway, New York, NY 10013, kick off at 9pm tonight. No cover. Details here.
PRINT! Tearing It Up – the exhibition I co-curated at London’s Somerset House this summer – ended with a bang with a talk by journalist Kieran Yates about her magazine British Values (one of my highlights of the show).
Continue reading PRINT! Tearing It Up ends with a British Values bang