I’ve organised a small exhibition of artwork relating to designs used in the forthcoming Barney Bubbles x Fred Perry collaboration; it opens later this week at Fred Perry’s flagship London store.
Elvis Costello
Jasper: Memories of the London fashion label and a Barney Bubbles connection
I’ve dug into collector and graphic artist Ian Harris’s rich archive again and turned up a brace of t-shirts he designed in the late 70s for Jasper, the eponymous London-based fashion label operated by entrepreneur Jasper Hamilton Holmes from showrooms in central London.
Continue reading Jasper: Memories of the London fashion label and a Barney Bubbles connection
POP: Exciting new book to showcase Brian Griffin’s enigmatic excellence
I have written an essay for POP, the forthcoming book showcasing the great British photographer Brian Griffin’s engagement with music.
Continue reading POP: Exciting new book to showcase Brian Griffin’s enigmatic excellence
When Chuck Berry and Little Richard played Knees Up Mother Brown on David Letterman in London
I saw Chuck Berry play live twice, and have written previously about the first time when, supported by David Bowie-endorsed revivalist rockers Fumble, he performed a truncated set at the Rainbow theatre in north London’s Finsbury Park in September 1973.
The second time was frankly bizarre. He and Little Richard sat in with Paul Shaffer and his band during a live broadcast of The David Letterman Show from the UK capital in 1995.
The Stiff Records clock: When You Kill Time You Murder Success
Stiff Records was on fire in 1977.
The British independent record label, with owners Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson snapping up acts and art director Barney Bubbles applying his unsurpassable skills to the visualising of their music, came straight out of the traps 40 years ago this month with the release of the first ‘punk’ LP Damned Damned Damned by – who else? – The Damned.
Continue reading The Stiff Records clock: When You Kill Time You Murder Success
Brian Griffin: Capitalist Realism opens today at Steven Kasher Gallery
It’s exciting to note the opening today of photographer Brian Griffin’s first US solo show, Capitalist Realism at New York’s Steven Kasher Gallery.
Continue reading Brian Griffin: Capitalist Realism opens today at Steven Kasher Gallery
Seven works by Barney Bubbles feature in Making Music Modern: Design For The Eye & Ear at MoMA
//Left: Poster, 30 x 20″, one of a series of four, for Generation X residency at The Marque, Soho, London, September 1977. Right: Poster, 60 x 40″, one of a series of five for Stiff Records package tour of UK, October/November, 1977. Design (c) Barney Bubbles Estate//
New York’s Museum Of Modern Art is featuring seven works by the late graphics maestro Barney Bubbles in the current exhibition Making Music Modern: Design For The Eye & Ear.
Next exhibition: White Noise in Chaumont May 26 – June 10
Selection has started on the Barney Bubbles presence at this summer’s group exhibition about the visual language of music, White Noise: Quand le graphisme fait du bruit (When graphics make the noise) at the 23rd International Poster & Graphic Design Festival in Chaumont, France, from May 26 to June 10.
I have supplied the text for the catalogue and last week met co-curator Sophie Demay to start the exhibit selection; Sophie is creating White Noise with Étienne Hervy, the Chaumont festival artistic director and former editor of French graphics magazine Etapes.
Continue reading Next exhibition: White Noise in Chaumont May 26 – June 10
When Charlie met Malcolm
Year-ends and beginnings naturally bring a sense of loss, of time passed and experiences weighed.
For me, 2010 will always mark the deaths of two individuals of personal import and also of lasting significance to our culture: Charlie Gillett and Malcolm McLaren.
These apparently disparate individuals – Gillett 68 and McLaren 64 at their time of passing on, respectively, March 17 and April 8 – shared several characteristics, not least idiosyncratic and uncompromising viewpoints and an abiding interest in bringing vanguard music into the mainstream.
Charlie was among folk and popular music’s most prominent enthusiasts – though he never liked the phrase, it is his achievement that “world music” entered western lives – and, as art consultant Bernd Wurlitzer wrote in 2008: “Malcolm McLaren is and has been an artist in the purest sense of the word for his entire adult life.”