Photo: Andrew Bunney. Earlier this month I gave a talk to foundation year art and design students at Saint Martin’s as part of a brief to deliver work based on their personal opinions and beliefs. Continue reading
Thanks are due to the indefatigable Brian McCloskey for turning up this little-known interview given by Barney Bubbles to journalist Johnny Black for an early 80s Smash Hits feature on the fledgling promo video industry. The quotes from Bubbles appeared exactly 30 years ago in the issue of the teen mag dated Jan 21- Feb 3, 1982 Continue reading
We knew there was going to be a bit of a turn-out because the RSVPs ran way past the 100 mark on the day the invites were dispatched, but I don’t think any of us involved in Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter quite expected such a huge gathering for last night’s private view. With everyone on top form and splendidly attired, the party to launch the show was a testament to the widely-held respect and affection for Lloyd and his work Continue reading
//Lloyd's lists.// Popular music and the surrounding culture has been the primary inspiration for Lloyd Johnson’s work, so it’s important that The Modern Outfitter – which opens today at London gallery Chelsea Space – reflects the guiding relationship between sounds and vision with an especially selected soundtrack. Continue reading
Album sleeves, photography, magazines and a variety of press cuttings and ephemera underline the widespread recognition for Lloyd Johnson’s designs over the decades. Lloyd paid particular attention to them in the assemblage of the contents of the table-top vitrines and a wall collage on the fifth day of the exhibition installation just before the weekend Continue reading
Included in the Lloyd Johnson show are photographs of performers wearing Johnson’s apparel – above is a 1979 shot of Iggy Pop in one of the label’s jackets paired with a Johnson’s Bluebeat hat (if memory serves, Glen Matlock, who was working with Pop at the time on his album New Values, told me that Iggy half-inched it from him). Continue reading
//Boshier (right) with Hockney at the Royal College of Art, early 60s.// Here are some iPhone images from last night’s talk by Derek Boshier at Chelsea College Of Art & Design. Shifting between slides on a carousel, views of his most recent work on computer and screenings of his early 70s film works Change and Reel (both originally shot on 16mm), Derek covered the waterfront in his talk and then in conversation with me, from art education in England in the Fifties to The Clash, David Bowie and Barney Bubbles to dealing with hawkish American foreign policy in the Tweens Continue reading
Now the exhibition is getting to the nitty-gritty; yesterday Lloyd paid particular attention to the area dedicated to his businesses Cockell & Johnson and Johnson & Johnson, which produced peacock dandy and pop art fashion between 1968 and 1974 in Kensington Market. Above are the print shirts which will be displayed, below some of the detail – on the left a stockinged leg print designed by Jane Wentworth (then Wealleans), who has contributed to my Tommy Roberts book. Lloyd and his partner Jill also completed the tabel-top vitrines which display printed material including sketches, artwork, photographs and press coverage Continue reading
//Lloyd takes a break to chat to (from left): Chelsea Space director Donald Smith, Eve Ferrett + Mark Summerfield.// Among friends dropping in at Chelsea Space to check out the Lloyd Johnson show installation yesterday were performer Eve Ferrett and her other half Mark Summerfield. They told us they were knocked out by the way it is shaping up; a lot of progress has been made with the upper part of the space and the ramp is beginning to take shape, as is the area which reflects Lloyd’s retail manifestations Cockell & Johnson and Johnson & Johnson (1968-1974) Continue reading
The installation of the the Lloyd Johnson exhibition got off to a flying start yesterday. The key piece – a reconstruction of the 80s frontage of Johnson’s Kensington Market boutique – was made and put in place by the crack team headed by Rod Holt at Mojo Creative Productions. “I had the three pieces of glass signage in storage,” says Johnson Continue reading
Photographer Ivan Jones dropped by this week to take my portrait for a forthcoming book about the design business Burro. Continue reading
Among the artefacts featured in forthcoming exhibition Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter will be an original copy of Rod Stewart’s second solo album, the magnificent Gasoline Alley. Released in 1970 on the Vertigo “swirl” label and now highly collectable, the album’s inner gatefold features this image of Stewart wearing an extraordinary trimmed jacket designed by Johnson Continue reading
As Out magazine’s Listed Londoner this month, Duggie Fields gives voice to the concerns of many of us: the desecration of this city’s fine buildings by evil property developers – abetted by lax local authorities and supine architects – in the name of “regeneration”. Rounding on the plans to tear down Earl’s Court to make way for so-called “villages”, Fields says the capital’s speculative boom is resulting in “anonymous structures that say nothing about the places they inhabit, do not meet the housing needs of locals and are driven purely by greed”. Continue reading
Pauline's Gone Digital (for Pauline Boty), Derek Boshier, 2011. Diptych, 5' x 10'. Acrylic on canvas from the series Paris Texas, Paris France, Paris Hilton. Continue reading
Barney Bubbles' fold-out poster for UK tour by Ian Dury & The Blockheads. Continue reading
//Cancer Relief card adapted, augmented and personalised by Lorry Sartorio, oil paint on printed card, 150mm x 150mm.// No surprises that the pick of the cards received this Christmas came from artists. Continue reading
Celia Birtwell’s discreet yet substantial contribution to British fashion, interiors and art has been overlooked for decades. This autumn’s publication of a book penned by the designer with Dominic Lutyens is a welcome addition to THE LOOK library, writes Mrs G Continue reading
Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter – the exhibition about one of the greatest contributors to British street fashion and visual culture of recent times – is at London gallery Chelsea Space in the New Year, from January 24 to March 3. The show will be centred on Johnson’s archive of garments, artwork, fabrics, ephemera and personal effects, augmented by contributions from customers and collectors from Tokyo to Sydney to LA. For a taster here’s a trio of clips featuring Johnson’s designs: Tom Waits’ boots (from 2.50): Iggy’s jacket on The Tube: George Michael’s jacket + boots: More info on Lloyd Johnson The Modern Outfitter here . Continue reading
//The Malcolm. Photo (c) Jean Vong.// This is The Malcolm, the award designed by Marc Newson for the visual arts bienniale Performa; the inaugural award was presented a couple of weeks back by Greil Marcus and Lou Reed to the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson for his 12-hour piece Bliss Continue reading
//TV crew sets up in the basement.// Yesterday I was visited by a camera crew for an interview about the behind-the-scenes individuals who have made the difference to British popular music over the years. The team, from Kobalt Productions in Berlin, are producing the documentary for Franco-German arts channel ARTE Continue reading
//Paul Smith Collection, A/W 2011.// Thanks to Julian Morey for alerting me to these splendid photographs of Paul Smith designer Derek Morton in clothes from the company’s autumn/winter 2011 collection. Morton has worked with Smith since the mid-70s and is currently head of the label’s menswear division for Japan. //Paul Smith Collection, A/W 2011.// A thoroughly nice chap, Morton is also self-deprecating and reserved, as I discovered when I interviewed him recently for the Tommy Roberts book (he designed menswear for Roberts’ extraordinary Covent Garden outlet City Lights Studio ) Continue reading
Tonight see the launch of the new pop-up shop from designer David Saunders’ print label David David. At 36 Earlham Street WC2, the shop – which succeeds a similar venture around the corner in Seven Dials - will be open until February 2012. Continue reading
Curatorial work today on the Lloyd Johnson exhibition (coming to London gallery Chelsea Space in the New Year) was a joy. Continue reading
//Proof copy of unused front cover for single sleeve, Your Generation/Day By Day, Generation X, Chrysalis, 1977.// Presented here for the first time in nearly 35 years, this is Barney Bubbles’ original artwork for the front cover of Your Generation, the 1977 debut single by Generation X. Continue reading
A viewing of Jes Benstock’s fab doc A British Guide To Showing Off occasions this opportunity to dig out the London Belles feature from a 1973 issue of long-lost publication West 1. Above is milliner Diane Logan in one of her outfits as contestant Rita Ritz in the 1973 Alternative Miss World. Logan – wife of sculptor Peter , mother of fashion illustrator Blue and sister-in-law of AMW host & hostess Andrew – is wearing a satin bathing suit with one of her own hats (from Logan’s Chiltern Street shop) and sandals from Tommy Roberts’ Covent Garden boutique City Lights Studio . Continue reading
