This is a funky, fascinating and sometimes very funny exhibition celebrating the longstanding tradition of independent British magazine publishing over the past fifty years or so. And it is FREE!
Past
There’s a nod to older, historical magazines at the start of the show, where the curators display a couple of copies of Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticist magazine, Blast!, from 1915 – a quite extraordinary typographical and editorial irruption into the sedate world of Edwardian gentlemen’s magazines – and a copy of Peace News from the 1930s v but overall this isn’t a historical exhibition, its focus is very much on the modern (post-1960s) tradition of alternative and right-on magazines, with a special interest in the reflowering of indie magazines in the last decade or so.
Things really get going in the late 1960s with the birth of the ‘counter-culture’ and the founding of critical magazines like Spare Rib (1972 to 1993), Black Dwarf (1968 to 1972), Oz (1967 to 1973) and Private Eye (1961 and still going). The exhibition then traces the evolution of small, independent, counter-cultural, as well as fashion and music and art and architecture magazines, from then to the present day.
Spare Rib 1972 © Angela Phillips
Several gallery walls are covered with a massive wire grille on which have been hung scores and scores of magazines, with a dazzling variety of photographic, typographical and design styles, to admire and enjoy, with titles like international times, Beaver, Mole, Frendz, Shrew (‘the suppressed power of female sexuality’), Pink, Gay Left, Squatters and so on. The funniest title was Prada Meinhof (bright green, at the right of the photo below) which bears the text ‘Only way to change things – is to shoot the men who arrange things’. Right on, sister.
Installation view of Print! Tearing it Up at Somerset House, photo by Doug Peters
Alongside these wall displays are a number of glass cases focusing on the stories of particular magazines or themes.
For example, one case tells the story of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Sex in the King’s Road which received coverage around 1976 in sex-related mags like Forum and Gallery International as well as the giveaway magazine West One, edited by a young Janet Street-Porter.
Another case focuses on Gandalf’s Garden, the official publication for a collectively-run ‘head shop’ for hippies, also in the King’s Road, which issued six copies from 1968 to 1969.
Contemporary art and graphics have been publicised in a tradition of small art magazines like Apollo, Art Line in Newcastle, Modern Painters, Frieze, Arty, Garageland and Pavement Licker.
Satirical artworld writing could more recently be found in titles like Sleazenation (1996 to 2004), Vice, and the attractively titled Shoreditch Twat.
In one case the show draws links between the 1935 art magazine Axis launched by writer Myfanwy Jones, and the art and politics magazine Mute, founded in 1994 and still going strong.
Private Eye Issue 815, 12 March 1993 © Private Eye
In 1977 Peter York wrote a defining article for Harpers magazine about the independent magazines of the day, mentioning such obscure productions as Emma Tennant’s literary quarterly Bananas, lifestyle mag The New Style and Nick Kimberley’s reggae pamphlet, Pressure Drop.
And a whole display case is devoted to the worldwide publishing and digital success which is Time Out, launched in 1968 and overseen for most of the time since then by publisher Tony Elliott.
Alternative music mags have included Freakbeat, Zigzag, Echoes, Rough Trade, Flexipop!, SFX with more modern publications emerging from grime and dub-step like Woofah, Push and Trench.
The mindmap
Confused? You should be – the last fifty years have witnessed wave after wave of new, small, independent, radical magazines catering to an ever-expanding list of issues and constituencies.
One entire wall of the exhibition is devoted to a vast mind-map which shows the links and interconnections between all these independent magazines. If you buy the exhibition booklet (£4.50) you get a free fold-out version of it (though not quite this big!).
Mind map of British magazines
… and present
Only a little way into the show does its origin and motivation become a bit clearer, specifically the motivation of exhibition curator Paul Gorman.
In 2011 Gorman finished writing a history of The Face, the cultural magazine published from 1980 to 2004. In doing so, in comparing the Face to its current equivalents and looking for its lasting legacy, Gorman became aware of the raft of indie mags which had emerged from the wreckage of the economic crash of 2008.
In an interview with The Drum (see the second video, below) Gorman says:
Around 2011, 2012 I noticed these magazines emerging – like The Gentlewoman and Mushpit – and I was quite encouraged by the fact they were being published mainly by young women. They were anti-corporate, and they had all those values that appealed to me.
It inspired Gorman to take stock of the magazine culture of our times and he realised that, although some high-profile magazines had recently gone to the wall (Glamour, Look), sparking an outbreak of gloom among high-end publishers, we are actually living amid a resurgence of cheaply produced, anti-establishment, freethinking publications.
A little like the revival of vinyl records and just as counter-intuitively, print magazines are going from strength to strength in the digital era.
Garageland Issue 19 2015 SELF © Paul Gorman Archive/ Photo by Milly Spooner
So mixed in among the older examples from the 60s, 70s and 80s in the exhibition, is a rich selection of mags from just the past decade or so, which address 21st century issues.
As I walked round, admiring all this visual energy and creativity, I reflected that although Gorman and the other curators might find it inspiring and exciting that there are so many mags celebrating ‘alternative views’ on lifestyle, leisure and architecture or addressing topical issues including diversity, gender, sexuality and media manipulation… us older visitors might instead notice the surprising continuities between the concerns of 1968 and those of 2018 and draw different conclusions.
My take would be that, although gender, sex and race continue to be as reliable money-spinners as ever they were – expressing black anger, women’s anger, the newer range of LGBT+ anger, Asian anger and so on – and are enthusiastically snapped up by guilty young white students – meanwhile the ideas which seemed dominant in my youth – socialism, communism, Marxism, and working class politics – seem to have largely disappeared.
The white working class communities that I thought I was helping when I joined the Young Socialists in 1977 have been redefined into union jack-waving, Tommy Robinson-supporting, Brexit-voting chavs, recategorised as patriarchal racists. Now all the liberal press tells us we should be supporting female BBC presenters, Hollywood actresses and illegal immigrants everywhere.
And the working class lads who empty my bins every week? No one writes about them or gives a damn about their lives. I suppose they just don’t live at the intersection of style, fashion, gender and race.
Thiiird Issue 1 COMMUNITY © Thiiird / Photo by Turkina Faso
To quote the exhibition text:
The debate surrounding gender and sexuality has been reflected in the success of hugely popular magazines launched in the past decade, from The Gentlewoman, which can chart its evolution from Spare Rib, the seminal feminist magazine founded in the 1970s, to Ladybeard, Ablaze! and D.I.Y zines created by teenage feminist collectives in 1990s to 2000s, among many more showcased.
Similarly, the exhibition celebrates the rise in titles dedicated to ethnic minority communities and concerns, with examples including gal-dem, Thiiird and Burnt Roti, which showcases South Asian creativity.
Positive News Issue 90 Third Quarter 2017 NEW MASCULINITY © Positive News Magazine / Paul Gorman Archive / Photo by Theo Jemison
If it ain’t black, queer or about women it doesn’t seem to have any purchase, any traction, any validity.
That said, it’s not all identity politics. There are plenty of other contemporary magazines which are not directly political, all manner of magazines out there which I’d never heard of, such as Real Review and Eyesore which promote new writing on architecture and the urban environment, Little White Lies focusing on film, and The Gourmand on food.
Read, listen, watch
The last room in the exhibition is devoted to a very pink, pop-up newstand bearing a variety of bang up-to-date mags which you are invited to pick up and browse through.
The pink pop-up newstand at Print! Tearing it Up at Somerset House. Photo by Doug Peters
This space could have done with some chairs or a couple of sofas to really kick back in.
Podcasts
The pop-up newstand is next to a row of equally pink booths each with a set of headphones for you to slip on and listen to podcasts i.e. brief interviews or monologues by key figures from the recent history of independent magazines.
It would have been interesting to find out more about the impact of digital technology on magazine and news culture:
How much has digital supplanted print magazines? Are there particular reasons why some magazines have gone out of print and out of business, while others are successfully making the move to an online-only existence? Is it luck, or something to do with the subject matter, or the audiences?
And what does it take to succeed in setting up an alternative mag in the current climate? A good business plan? A clear proposition for your advertising department to promote? To what extent does the need to sell adverts undermine or negate any claim to ‘radical’ thought?
The exhibition prompted all these thoughts and more, but didn’t really address any of them. Where should I go to understand a) the current state of play among radical mags b) the direction of travel?
Activities
The exhibition is accompanied by a rash of activities including all-female activist lines-ups, explorations of self-education, acknowledgment of architectural anarchy, plus a PROCESS! Festival co-curated by Somerset House Studios artists OOMK (One of My Kind).
The PROCESS! Festival will run from Saturday 21 to Sunday 22 July and will celebrate independent media and making, bringing together established and emerging designers, artists, activists and publishers to explore, interrogate and share approaches to creative and collaborative processes.
Videos
There is, of course, a promotional video.
And this useful video report on the show by The Drum.
Related links
- Print! Tearing It Up continues at Somerset House until 22 August 2018
- World Illustration Awards 2018 continues at Somerset House until 20 June 2018
Books & Boots 