London Calling: King Mob Echo, Hornsey and others
The materials span between approximately 1966 and 1978, focusing on the founding and proliferation of English countercultural publications and the later emergence of punk.
The papers of Richard Neville, editor of OZ magazine, include original issues and the magazine’s news archives, as well as personal photographs and correspondence. The magazine bears the influence of psychedelia and American lifestyle movements, while documentation of its editors’ obscenity trial reveals the potential of a glossy, wide-circulation magazine to challenge standards of propriety.
Original issues of King Mob bring workerist anarchism and nihilism to interpretations of Situationism and Marx. Named after graffiti found after the Gordon Riots of 1759, the publication is confrontational and its production deliberately rough.
The Malcolm McLaren Papers covers the impresario’s time in art school and, with Vivienne Westwood, his running of a boutique on Kings Road. This boutique served as a gathering place for members of the emergent punk scene, and it was through this that McLaren assembled the Sex Pistols. Photographs of the 1977 Sex Pistols American Tour are the latest documents in the presentation.