I WROTE THIS BOOK & GUARDIAN STORY: RED GALLERY

I was first approached about writing the book which became MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING in 2011. It was published in December 2014.

We had a party. I escaped before dawn. RED gave away 2000 copies. If you weren’t there, you can read the book here. It’s designed by Tomato, art directed by Jason McGlade.

Here’s the related article in The Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/18/cultural-revolution-red-gallery-east-london-shoreditch-regeneration

Grateful to the Red Gallery’s Ernesto Leal for awakening many of the thoughts that made the final cut. Also for he and Yarda Krampol’s trust in my exploration of the Shoreditch I’d recently returned to. I approached it like a documentary, an archive. Left some interviews entirely unedited.

The essay explores the cultural legacy and necessity of Red – plus 30 interviews with people involved with the building of this unparalleled contemporary hacienda. Thanks to all contributors/interviewees and those that supported the creation of the book.

Pics below by Urte Janus, more here, the cover pic is thanks to Fiona Cartledge.

Your house is my acid house: flyers 💊❤️✌️

A myth about graphic designers is that they’re sticklers of aesthetics and masters of finding the ultimate font, aren’t they?

They know how to rock a retentive margin. And their pencils are always needle sharp, and in a nicely OCD-straight line. Most def a tonne more file-conscious and organised than the paint-brush wielding crazies who took the less financially instantaneous pathway at art college – under the belief they were secret Hirsts, but better. It’s an old fashioned belief that fine artists hold the higher ground of insanity. It’s a pre-pop assumption that they refuse to sell out to capitalist normality and they have ‘chosen’ to live in their mother’s shed with a Dan Flavin light, making shit video installations about mice being their best friends from the city they have been rejected from, or they’ll solve world peace by forming sculptures out of coffee grinds in the shape of Africa.

Yeah – I came to this realisation when putting together this catalogue for a show about acid house flyers. Although the curator, Ernesto Leal had done the groundwork, tracking down these heroes of rave art, a collection of the first rave wave of designs, it took ’some time’ to co-ordinate the facts of this posteriturial research (posterity/curatorial – yes, basically a timeline) – these designers were rock n roll…

*Ease on by…*

– under the echoes of the utterances of acid house, always said between gurns and rushes upon rave fields of yore – Where are you from? What are you on? (obviously my answer would always be that I was from the school bus and I was on my way home) – we EVENTUALLY agreed on the dates and places and facts of these MDMA artifacts.

One love.

[please click the blue Issuu link below if the artwork doesn’t show in your browser]

issuu.com/ourhistory/docs/poster-back-5?e=0/7567862

Creative direction for the poster was by Wilhelm Finger at Double Decker – – always a dream to work with.