Paul Gorman

The Old Man: Philip “Staff” Gorman (April 25, 1903 – June 8, 1980)

AFG, PDG, Margaret Barrett (later Roditi), Billy Craigan, March 2 1940 copy
//My father in uniform on his wedding day, March 2, 1940, north London//

“Bad thing for a young man to lose his father” Charles Cheeryble, Nicholas Nickleby

My father died 35 years ago today.

I was 20 at the time, and witnessed him take his final breath. The narrow world of music and clothes I inhabited was preoccupied with Ian Curtis’s recent suicide; given the fact that my father had been diagnosed with cancer four years previously and spent the last 18 months on earth hospitalised and fighting like a bastard for his life, I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. PiL’s Death Disco was much more my speed.

Continue reading The Old Man: Philip “Staff” Gorman (April 25, 1903 – June 8, 1980)

‘A booby trap in Pop Art’: The tits tee featured in 1972 Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue

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//Detail, Frederick’s catalogue. Photo: Johnny Deluxe//

Congratulations to our pal Johnny Deluxe for this fantastic spot; he happened upon this kitsch sketch of an original tits t-shirt while leafing through an early 70s Frederick’s Of Hollywood catalogue.

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//Catalogue page. Photo: Johnny Deluxe//

Continue reading ‘A booby trap in Pop Art’: The tits tee featured in 1972 Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue

A cause for celebration: Digitisation of all 239 issues of Spare Rib

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Great news that the British Library has digitised the archive of one of the most important magazines of modern times: Spare Rib.

If you don’t know it or haven’t seen the publication, you are in for a treat. As the British Library’s politics and public life curator Polly Russell says, Spare Rib was “funny, irreverent, intelligent and passionate… a product of its time which is also somehow timeless”.

Continue reading A cause for celebration: Digitisation of all 239 issues of Spare Rib

Derek Boshier’s ‘sardonic fairy tale’ 16 Situations in the spell-binding Land Marks: Structures For A Poetic Universe

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//16 Situations in vitrine at Land Marks. Photo: Jasper Weinstein Sheffield//

I’m pretty late with this but there are still three or so weeks to go, so, if you have the opportunity, I recommend a visit to Hauser + Wirth Somerset, home until June 21 of the contemplative and poised exhibition Land Marks: Structures For A Poetic Universe.

Curated by historians Nicholas Olsberg and Markus Lähteenmäki, Land Marks presents 100 architectural studies and works constituting an investigation into the boundaries between sculpture and architecture and landscapes and cities.

The spell-binding space at Durslade Farm outside the village of Bruton provides the perfect setting; I am thrilled that the curators included Derek Boshier’s quizzical 1971 work 16 Situations.

Continue reading Derek Boshier’s ‘sardonic fairy tale’ 16 Situations in the spell-binding Land Marks: Structures For A Poetic Universe

Introducing first UK screening of Malcolm McLaren’s completed Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century at The Performance Studio next week

Malcolm McLaren

McLaren opened up the frontiers between artistic and wider cultural attitudes by taking fashion and music out of their respective contexts and translating them into new formats that captured the wider popular zeitgeist. A closer look at his seemingly disarticulated, exuberant and streetwise oeuvre shows it to be consistent and, in its own way, profound.

David Thorp

On Wednesday (June 3) I’m introducing a screening of Malcolm McLaren’s Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century at The Performance Studio in Peckham, south London.

This is a the first-ever opportunity in this country to see the final work, which McLaren completed a matter of weeks before his death in April 2010. A working version was shown here just once, at Newcastle’s Baltic in November 2009.

Continue reading Introducing first UK screening of Malcolm McLaren’s completed Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century at The Performance Studio next week

Richard Hambleton + Malcolm McLaren = Witches x The Shadow Man

Malcolm McLaren posing on the streets of NYC. April 1983. © Bob Gruen / www.bobgruen.com Please contact Bob Gruen's studio to purchase a print or license this photo. email: websitemail01@aol.com phone: 212-691-0391
//Malcolm McLaren and Andrea Linz with a Hambleton Shadow Man in the West Village, NYC, April 1983. © Bob Gruen/www.bobgruen.com. Please contact Bob Gruen’s studio to purchase a print or license this photo. Email: websitemail01@aol.com Phone: + 212-691-0391//
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//Witches Shadow Man skirt, 1983. Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood and Richard Hambleton. This image (c) www.paulgormanis.com//

An under-acknowledged art world connection forged by Malcolm McLaren during his fashion design partnership with Vivienne Westwood was to the godfather of street art, conceptual artist Richard Hambleton.

During his forays in New York in the early 80s, McLaren was struck by Hambleton’s eerie representations of The Shadow Man figure; there was one on a wall in Bethune Street in the West Village, near the studio of McLaren’s photographer friend and ally Bob Gruen.

Continue reading Richard Hambleton + Malcolm McLaren = Witches x The Shadow Man

LP artwork distilled, venue interiors re-appraised and video portraits of Ian Brown, Matt Johnson and Richard Strange at Peter Wilkins’ Lost In Music

60s, Van Morrison - Astral Weeks, Peter Wilkins, 2015
//Astral Weeks – Van Morrison, Peter Wilkins, 2015//
Hammersmith Apollo, Peter Wilkins, 2015
//Hammersmith Apollo, Peter Wilkins, 2015//

In the 21st century, when digital downloads displaced compact discs as the format of consumer choice, music went naked into the world, unadorned by design or packaging. Yet this in turn gave rise to vigorous rear-guard action in the growing appreciation of what was fast disappearing. As if from the dead, vinyl made a comeback and the fan in Wilkins places him in a key position to cogitate this phenomenon.
From my text for the Lost In Music catalogue

Continue reading LP artwork distilled, venue interiors re-appraised and video portraits of Ian Brown, Matt Johnson and Richard Strange at Peter Wilkins’ Lost In Music

Ms. Caroline Coon: Radical person recalls Pauline Boty’s My Colouring Book and the first time she heard Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett – at Derek Boshier’s Ladbroke Grove studio

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//From Radical People, Vol 1, No 2//

Great to see heroine Caroline Coon among the subjects/contributors to the second issue of Radical People, Reba Maybury’s celebration of quinquagenarian-plus non-conformists.

Continue reading Ms. Caroline Coon: Radical person recalls Pauline Boty’s My Colouring Book and the first time she heard Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett – at Derek Boshier’s Ladbroke Grove studio