British Design From 1948: Innovation In The Modern Age – the new book accompanying the forthcoming show at the V+A – is a bumper edition: 400 pages weighing in at 5lbs. Continue reading
This Richard Hell shirt – one of 12 produced in 1977 by NY punk photographer Eileen Polk – is currently for sale by UK memorabilia specialists Dig Gallery. “I picked the image from a photo-session I had done with Eileen,” says Hell Continue reading
If you’re in Austin TX – and there’s a chance you might be since hundreds of thousands of people have descended on the city for the annual SXSW film/music/interactive conflab taking place there this week – try and nip along to the Ray Ban Legendary Visions house on Rainey Street on the eastside for a gander at the room collages/installations I have engineered to reflect my take on the look of music. Continue reading
Ian Dury With Love, 60in x 40in poster, 1977. I sourced this incredible large-scale Barney Bubbles-designed poster from a private collection for the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition British Design: 1948-2012. Continue reading
Promotional poster/double-sided fold-out tour programme for Ian Dury & The Blockheads, 1978. 59cm x 84cm. Ian Dury With Love, 60in x 40in poster, 1977 Continue reading
Last week I gave a talk about the work of Barney Bubbles at Bold Italic , the annual graphics conference organised by Michaël Bussaer of Ghent’s St-Lucas Institute for Higher Education in the Arts. Continue reading
//Front cover, No Pussyfooting, Fripp & Eno, EG/Island, 1973.// The final piece in Tate Modern’s current Yayoi Kusama show – her dramatic Infinity Mirror Room – brought to my vinyl-fixated mind one of the greatest record sleeves of all time: the gatefold for No Pussyfooting, the 1973 album by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. All of a piece with the music it packages – prismatic, playful, calm, cerebral, oblique – the four-part composition was photographed and designed at Eno’s behest by photographer/filmmaker Willie Christie. Continue reading
With Cardin, Paris, January 2012. Continue reading
I was in the audience at the Beacon Theatre NYC for the 1999 VH1 Divas, where this Whitney Houston performance was recorded. Continue reading
Sculptor John Frankland is a near-contemporary of Damien Hirst’s; both studied at Goldsmith’s in the 80s and their work has been included in the same group shows and prominent collections. I asked John for his take on the grand Gagogo gesture of The Complete Spot Paintings, the exhibition which has “taken over the planet” (according to some press reports) by showing 1500 examples of one of the artist’s signature works across the 11 Gagosian galleries Continue reading
Cover design based on artwork from: (front) C.Comics No. 2, 1965; (back) The Friendly Way, 1972. The new BeatBooks catalogue is preoccupied with a print netherworld encompassing one-offs, limited editions and short-runs published by concrete poets, beats and other outsiders Continue reading
Thanks are due to Derek Harris of Lewis Leathers for scans from 80s Japanese magazine London Ni Ikitai (I Want To Go To London) featuring the Johnson’s stores in Kensington Market and at 406 King’s Road, World’s End. Researched, written and photographed by music/style journalist Haruko Minakami, these bring back many memories of Lloyd Johnson and Continue reading
The new issue of The Word magazine (featuring a great cover story/interview with a naked Lady GaGa by Mark Ellen) includes a photo-spread on Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter. There are some photographic gems, among them John Lydon in a leery Johnson’s plaid suit in 1980 and the cover of Wreckless Eric’s album The Wonderful World Of…, which has a whole bunch of people in suits from Lloyd’s shop (including Danny Baker drafted in to stand behind the drum-kit). Continue reading
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
