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While the Sex Pistols and the Clash wreaked havoc on Britain’s pop scene, their disciples were busy with glue and scissors, channelling punk’s energy and DIY spirit into hundreds of posters, fanzines and sleeve art. Now an exhibition brings back these lost classics of the revolution

In 1977, Toby Mott celebrated his 14th birthday in the Roxy in Covent Garden, London’s now legendary punk club. He remembers “loud pounding darkness, cheap lager, the smell of cigarettes, sweat and piss… a few floors almost empty, like a kind of youth club”.

Back then, he belonged to a gang of kids from Pimlico comprehensive that called themselves the ASA (Anarchist Street Army) and hung out daily in an independent record shop on nearby Wilton Road called Recordsville. There, he started buying seven-inch singles by the punk vanguard: “In the City” by the Jam, “New Rose” by the Damned, “White Riot” by the Clash, “Oh Bondage, Up Yours” by X-Ray Spex. There, too, he discovered the dubious delights of several second-division punk groups that have long since faded into obscurity, the likes of the Boys, the Cortinas, Eater, Headache, Slaughter and the Dogs, the Snivelling Shits…

Mott also started collecting fanzines, flyers and posters. “I’d go around to Recordsville when they were putting up new posters and nab the ones that had just been taken down. I’d go to Rough Trade or Beaufort Market in Chelsea and pick up flyers for gigs. Most of it was produced in such relatively small quantities for these specialist record shops. I knew, even then, that they had a certain value. They helped make you a serious punk.”

Mott, who is now an artist and curator, has been collecting punk ephemera ever since, watching its value grow in the three decades since. An exhibition of his British punk paraphernalia, Loud Flash, opens at the Haunch of Venison gallery in London next month. It will also feature often inflammatory political ephemera from the time, including National Front recruitment posters that show just how much the extreme right, as well as the radical left, utilised punk graphics and imagery in their attempts to attract Britain’s disenfranchised youth. “You could go to certain punk gigs, Sham 69, say, and were just as likely to be handed a National Front leaflet as an Anti-Nazi League one. It was a very aggressive and polarised political time, as well as a cultural one. Those ideas of the extreme were always in the room.”

Mott thinks that punk has been misrepresented since, both by rock historians who have over-intellectualised its meaning and context, and by curators who over-emphasise its artistic links to previous avant-gardes. Ironically, the academic essays that accompany the exhibition fall into the same trap, calling up the Bauhaus, the Futurists, the Situationists, as well as Andy Warhol.

“Punk was what it was,” says Mott. “It doesn’t need all that. Jamie Reid, who created the Sex Pistols’ posters, came from a radical 60s art-school background, and knew the history of disruptive art movements, but mostly it was kids in suburban bedrooms and garages with scissors, paste and photocopiers. The graphics sprang from the same place as the music, the do-it-yourself-and-do-it-now attitude that underpinned punk. It was an incredibly proactive time, the opposite of today’s consumer-led pop culture. Everything was fast, aggressive, disposable, a furious outburst against the boredom of life in 70s Britain.”

Mott’s collection contains several rare Jamie Reid works, including a poster entitled “Never Mind the Bans”, advertising the Sex Pistols’ troubled British tour in 1977, when the group’s notoriety was such that several town councils banned them from performing. There is work, too, by the artist Linder Sterling, who created the iconic artwork for the Buzzcocks’ single “Orgasm Addict”, and posters utilising the images of established music photographers like Pennie Smith and Kate Simon, both of whom helped create the outlaw mythology of the Clash.

What interests Mott most about his own collection, though, are what he calls “the anonymous artefacts” produced in small numbers by fired-up teenagers. To this end, he has included crudely made Xeroxed fanzines like Sniffin’ Glue, Alternative Ulster, Ripped & Torn, London’s Burning and the wonderfully named Chelmsford’s Dead. “In a way, these are artefacts left over from a dead culture,” says Mott, “but they speak more powerfully about what punk was really about, that moment of momentum and self-empowerment. It was not about making a profit or building a fucking brand. It seems odd now that the establishment were so threatened by it, but they were. You can’t imagine a pop group today being a threat to the nation. Back then, we thought we were all about the future, but punk really was the last gasp of postwar radical culture.”

Loud Flash: British Punk on Paper is at Haunch of Venison, London W1, from 24 Sep until 30 Oct

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In a time before nylon and spandex, before even the idea of leisure, postwar Brits leave the air-raid shelters and learn to enjoy the daylight once more

My first reaction to this photograph is to feel itchy. It’s not just the thought of gritty sand infiltrating every bodily crevice; it’s the sight of all the cardigans and sweaters, the knee-length socks and tightly knotted ties, not to mention the thick khaki flannels of the demobbed soldier. Like sheep, people back then carried their insulation around with them, even in the summer. It’s such a woollen world that one of the women has brought her knitting to the beach, and bends over her clicking needles. Scratchiest of all is the figure dressed for the sun in funereal black velvet, with a black hat resting on his knees as a concession to informality: a cleric apparently, propped up on his deck chair in case anyone needs spiritual counsel.

To his credit, he conscientiously averts his eyes from the boy beside him, the only one in the crowd to realise that the beach is where you shed clothes and flaunt flesh. Stripping and preening, the show-off removes all the markers of social identity and economic function. Everyone else is costumed for school or for work, like the housewives in their dustcoats and pinafores; the soldier lying upside down as if discarded on the battlefield is still dressed for war. Instead of a bathing suit, the little girl near the centre makes do with rolled-up bloomers, and her beach towel is a blanket. A father shades his head with the cap from his son’s school uniform. This is how the world was before the invention of nylon and spandex, before Speedos and trainers and trackies and flip-flops. There was no leisurewear because there was no conception of leisure. What the beach offers here is the chance for a rest, as rare and brief as the spasm of sunshine.

In 1948 the war was not long over, and these creased and care-worn people are still learning how to enjoy the daylight. They might be in an air-raid shelter with the roof removed, or huddled on one of the London tube platforms that served as dormitories during the blitz; transposed to another country, this could be a mass grave. On a scorching day in July 1940 at the beach in Coney Island, Weegee famously photographed a crowd of more than one million broiling New Yorkers. Being exhibitionistic Americans, they all wave or swagger for his camera. But the bogged-down Britons look up more apprehensively, and the boy at the bottom shades his eyes to see whether the glare conceals a low-flying plane with a cargo of doodlebugs. Is it too soon to trust the sky?

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Your article (Warhol’s box of tricks, Weekend, 21 August) is mistaken when it says: “Delegating to a team of technicians who worked in a Manhattan studio he called the Factory, the artist created a conveyor belt that consciously blurred the line between individual authorship and mechanical reproduction.” During most of the 60s (when the original Silver Factory was in operation), Andy Warhol employed only one paid art assistant – Gerard Malanga. Although occasionally Warhol enlisted the help of other people to do things like stretch canvases on a voluntary basis, it was Gerard who helped Warhol with the actual silk-screening and it was Warhol, himself, who did the under-painting and over-painting on the canvases.

Throughout his career Warhol had fewer assistants working for him than most artists do today. In assessing Warhol’s methods of working, one must be careful to differentiate between his public pronouncements and the reality of how he actually worked. Although he may have liked to give journalists the impression that he was a “machine” who casually churned out works of art, in reality he was a control freak and workaholic who certainly knew the difference between prints (editions produced solely by “mechanical reproduction”) and paintings, which involved a more personal approach. If his paintings were created merely by mechanical reproduction, there would be no difference between the prints and the paintings.

Differentiating his prints from his paintings was presumably one of the reasons he started Factory Additions in 1966 – the company that was responsible for his mechanically reproduced prints, as opposed to his individually created paintings.

Gary Comenas

www.warholstars.org

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Something that’s fascinated me for a long time is the rationale behind advertising campaigns for exhibitions, like the one that pops up on the Tate’s website for Gauguin: Maker of Myth. Most of you will be aware that the primary marketing tool of any exhibition project is this type of poster image. The standard for Tate, and many other institutions, is the exhibition title and an image selected from the works of art that will be in the exhibition. So far, so obvious! Some of you will know the painting we’ve used for the Gauguin poster – it is Nevermore O Tahiti from the Courtauld Institute in London. 

Tate Modern's Gauguin exhibition poster

As the weeks go by, you’ll be seeing more and more of this advertisement, especially if you live in London – on buses, on the underground, in newspapers, online, all over the place. What do you think of the poster? What messages does it send out? What kind of discussions to you think we had at Tate, before we settled on that particular painting?

Thinking about it, it’s a big ask for one work of art to represent and characterise a whole project, especially when you’re dealing with an artist’s whole career. I guess in marketing terms the issue is very straightforward, i.e. what immediately comes into people’s minds when you mention Gauguin’s name? I was at my local gym last weekend (don’t ask…) and I was chatting to someone about my job and what projects I was working on. I mentioned the Gauguin exhibition and they immediately said ‘Isn’t he that painter who lived in Tahiti?’

Perhaps it was inevitable then, that we chose a Tahitian subject to advertise the exhibition, and an image of one of Gauguin’s girlfriends (to put it rather coyly) to boot. But while this painting is in many ways an obvious choice – it’s one of Gauguin’s most celebrated works after all – there’s something very intriguing about it. What do you think?

Painted lady: Gauguin's 'Nevermore' Image courtesy Courtauld Collection

I find her expression quite haunting, and there’s a sadness pervading the image. Or am I being led by the title Nevermore O Tahiti, which Gauguin painted onto the canvas itself…perhaps an allusion to the idea of paradise lost (Gauguin was certainly familiar with Milton’s epic poem) or Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven?

Sometimes it seems that Gauguin’s titles are as important as the works themselves. He carved, painted and etched enough of them on his sculptures, canvasses and prints. Nevermore O Tahiti is a rare example in English but many more are in Tahitian (or what Gauguin thought was Tahitian!) Aha oe feii? Or E haere oe I hia? How about Manao tupapau?

We’ve devoted a whole gallery to investigating Gauguin’s titles, what purpose they seem to serve, suggesting stories and narratives to the viewer. And that’s where you’ll find Nevermore O Tahiti on display…if you come to the exhibition, that is… 

Gauguin: Maker of Myth opens at Tate Modern on 30 September. Book tickets online or become a Tate Member or Tate Patron and visit for free.

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TGA 7315 Model of ships, nd, J M W Turner , Tate Archive. Copyright Tate

My name is David Pilling and I am the Archive Assistant Curator at Tate Archive. My job is a varied one but in the main I deal with photographic orders, loans, single items and various cataloguing projects.

The item I have chosen to talk about, a model of ships in a glass case, was found in JMW Turner’s bedroom at Queen Anne Street when he died in 1851. JMW (Joseph Mallord William) Turner was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist, printer and oil painter. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting, and his work is considered to be a Romantic preface to Impressionism.

Turner was almost certainly in possession of this model by the time he was living at Sandycombe Lodge in 1812/13, or at least by the time he left there in 1826, since F.E. Trimmer – the son of the Reverend Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one of Turner’s best and most intimate friends until his death -remembered them there as ‘several models of ships in glass cases, to which Turner had painted a sea and a background.’ It is not known at which date Turner was using the models specifically, or how he acquired them. The group comprises three luggers and a small three-masted, square-rigged sloop. There is a possibility that the ships in the model are based on unusual French military design, and were perhaps the work of a captured French sailor. This item forms part of a collection of studio equipment used by Turner which is held at Tate Archive along with three palettes, one paint box and two wooden equipment cases, many of which are on display in the Clore Gallery which houses the Tate’s Turner collection. This piece is of specific interested to me because it highlights the processes that artists go through to make their paintings, in this case using models of items to work to the correct perspective.

Turner used this model to aid his painting technique – compare this to contemporary artists such as David Hockney’s use of iPhone apps – do you think either method is valid?

TGA 7315

Written by David Pilling

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It’s just dawned on me that we begin installing Gauguin: Maker of Myth in precisely four weeks time. I know, I know, it should be obvious, right? The exhibition opens on 30 September, after all. But even though I’ve worked on many exhibitions at Tate, there’s always a moment when the penny finally drops, and you realise that the project – many years in the making – is actually going to happen. 

In the next month or so, shipments of art from around the world, from Chicago to Hong Kong (and many places in between), will start arriving at the gallery. We’ve got about 150 works of art in the exhibition, 63 paintings, 18 sculptures, carvings and ceramics, 69 letters, watercolours, drawings and prints, one paint box, one walking cane and, of course, a pair of clogs.

 And then there’s all the documentary material in the ‘life and times’ gallery, including photographs of many of the places that Gauguin visited and important events during his lifetime, my favourite being the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris for which the world-famous Eiffel Tower was built.

Have you ever wondered how an exhibition comes together? To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I ever gave it much thought before I started working in museums and art galleries. And even now the whole thing seems to me to be nothing short of a miracle. Over the next few weeks I’ll introduce some of the key characters in exhibition making, a ‘who’s who’ of who does what and why…beginning with that most elusive and mysterious of creatures…’the curator’…

Gauguin: Maker of Myth opens at Tate Modern on 30 September. Book tickets online or become a Tate Member or Tate Patron and visit for free.

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TGA 7247 'Winged Figure' 1962, Barbara Hepworth , Tate Archive. Copyright Bowness

I’m Andrew Neilson and I’m an archive cataloguer here in the Tate Archive. My main responsibilities involve organising and describing our archive collections, a job in which I take great pleasure as it offers me the chance to work closely with a variety of interesting items. One such item is this volume of sculpture records compiled and collated by the artist, Barbara Hepworth, which is my choice of treasure from our 1972 acquisitions.

Hepworth became a major figure in British sculpture and a pioneering force in British modern and abstract art. She trained at Leeds College of Art, from 1920-21, and the Royal Academy of Art in London, from 1921-23, both times training alongside Henry Moore, a friend and major influence on her work. Hepworth was also a lynchpin in the community of artists who lived and worked in post war St Ives.

Throughout her life Barbara Hepworth kept photographic records of her work, providing details of the sale and exhibition of each piece. Together, these records form a forty-five volume archive, documenting 50 years of her work. I have chosen volume thirty-two which includes the records of Winged Figure (1962), a piece commissioned by the  John Lewis Partnership for their flagship store on London’s Oxford Street. As a collection, TGA 7247 provides a comprehensive catalogue of Hepworth’s sculptures and offers an insight into her diligent approach to the documentation of her work. This collection is further complemented by our holdings of Barbara Hepworth material in TGA 965, TGA 200313, TGA 200314, and TGA 200415. Here one can view personal correspondence, prints, models and material relating to a documentary film made about Hepworth’s work, entitled, ‘Figures in a Landscape: Cornwall and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth’ - a piece I find particularly interesting as it places Hepworth’s work in the context of the Cornish landscape that inspired their creation.

TGA 7247 'Winged Figure' 1962, Barbara Hepworth , Tate Archive. Copyright Bowness

Winged Figure is a perfect example of art which has become part of the urban landscape. Can you think of any interesting sculptures in your local area?

TGA 7247

Written by Andrew Neilson

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All you Gauguin enthusiasts will know that he often signed his works ‘P GO’. Sometime last year, when we were throwing around ideas about merchandising during the exhibition, someone came up with the lovely idea of commissioning a children’s book, featuring Gauguin’s animals, birds and etc, with the title ‘P GO’.

No doubt it conjured up images of cute little penguins or the like (‘Pingu’ anyone?) Until, that is, it was pointed out that the ‘name’ probably derived from nautical slang for penis.

With someone as mischievous as Gauguin, you need to be on your guard. But where did he pick up such references? Most likely during his six years as a merchant seaman (1865-71) – not a career for the faint hearted, I imagine.

Gauguin left Marseilles on this boat – the Océanien – on 1st April 1891, bound for Tahiti. Courtesy Vincent Gille

Apparently people who met Gauguin would comment on how life on the ocean waves affected his speech, posture and dress, no doubt played-up by P GO himself, who thought it added to his ‘man of the world’ persona.

Thinking about it, Gauguin must have spent quite a lot of his life on board ships, from his childhood journeys to and from Peru, then long voyages with the merchant navy, and later as an artist, to Panama, Martinique, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands.

Funny how all those months at sea made so little impact on his work. But nautical references do pop up every now and again…if you look hard enough, that is…

Gauguin: Maker of Myth opens at Tate Modern on 30 September. Book tickets online or become a Tate Member or Tate Patron and visit for free.

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TGA 7129 'Artist's Culture' 1971, Gilbert & George (born 1943, born 1942), Tate Archive. Copyright Gilbert & George

I’m Allison and I’m an archive cataloguer here in the Tate Archive, I essentially rearrange and describe archive collections, be it business papers, personal items or collections that relate to works held in the Tate. To represent our acquisitions from 1971 I’ve picked a piece of early mail art created by Gilbert & George. Gilbert & George are two of a relatively small group of artists who have become household names. I would attribute this to both their outrageous style and their commitment to making art accessible to those outside the narrow confines of the art world. I think this is illustrated well in this piece by the inclusion of their early slogan ‘Art for All’ stamped on the card.

TGA 7129 'Artist's Culture' 1971, Gilbert & George (born 1943, born 1942), Tate Archive. Copyright Gilbert & George

TGA 7129 'Artist's Culture' 1971, Gilbert & George (born 1943, born 1942), Tate Archive. Copyright Gilbert & George

The card was produced by Gilbert & George in 1971, and was sent and dedicated to Sarah Whitfield, a Tate curator at the time. It is part of a series of nine cards which all contain a sketch of themselves and a limerick. This is the last one in the series, titled ‘Artist’s Culture’. The card illustrates a key theme of their work – that all art is ‘living sculpture’, indeed while they were at university at St Martins in the late 60s they regularly exhibited themselves as sculpture, so they became part of their own work. In this piece, they not only include a drawing of themselves – referred to by them as ‘Charcoal on Paper Sculptures’ - but the limerick is a form of singing sculpture. I like this piece because it is a work that also highlights the confident view of a unique pair of artists, who, not long out of art school were writing amusing anecdotes to a curator at the Tate Gallery, along with other art world dignitaries.

If you were to illustrate your own life what would it contain?

TGA 7129

Written by Allison Foster

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I’ve had a query on the blog about Gauguin’s relationship with Edgar Degas. While I ponder on this – it’s a great question but the answer is complicated – I thought you’d like to know that Degas owned ten paintings by Gauguin, a number of which are in our exhibition. Here’s one, Te Faaturuma (translated from ‘Tahitian’ as the brooding woman).

There’s a photograph of Gauguin in front of this painting, looking quite raffish in his wide-brimmed hat. It was taken in Paris, probably during an exhibition of his work, in late 1893 or perhaps 1894.

Gauguin must have liked the image because he pasted it into Diverses choses (1896-8), one of the sourcebooks he used for reference and developing ideas. The most famous of these books is Noa Noa (meaning ‘fragrance’). But more of that later…

Gauguin: Maker of Myth opens at Tate Modern on 30 September. Book tickets online or become a Tate Member or Tate Patron and visit for free.

Read the original post on The Great Tate Mod Blog