Agitpop

A school outing for the "breakfast club" on Wednesday - a sort of 3 men on the tube, the Artist, The Patron and me, the facilitator, or Fixer. (More on the breakfast club in a future post, but needless to say, we did not go without breakfast even though outside our normal environs. Although we had some vague plans, we ended up at Mike's Cafe - see The London Review of Breakfasts.) The purpose of our trip was to visit the london print studio (lps) to see the Agitpop (sic) exhibition - activist graphics, images, pop culture 1968-2008. A small but well-formed collection of images tracing the evolution of the political poster/graphic from Cuba in the '50s through the events of May '68 to punk and beyond. The Cuban material itself echoed back to the Soviet Agit-Prop posters of the '20s, which have been the subject of another recent exhibition. The surrealist influence of the situationists was also a common feature.

In the present Adbusters and the inspirational Brian Haw were referenced , but one was left with the feeling that if social networking is now to be internet based, web 2.0 has yet to take up the baton and be truly impactful in the manner of the movements driving and driven by the images seen in the lps exhibition. And the need to stand up for our rights becomes ever more (de)pressing, as evidenced by a recent documentary on More4, 'Taking Liberties", illustrating how our hard-won rights have been eroded over recent years. Property prices have also played their part in driving artists out, the works in the exhibition produced locally in Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove a stark reminder of how gentrification has changed this area so quickly since the '60s/'70s.

The exhibition closes at the end of May. There is what appears to be a similar exhibition on at the Hayward Gallery over the same period (natch) in their project space: May 68: Street Posters from the Paris Rebellion. This also seems worthy of investigation. although with Converse as a co-sponsor, even if the revolution will not be televised, it seems these days it can be commercialised.

The lps itself appears to be a superb organisation, a charity providing print making facilities to any who want to use them, at a modest cost. We we lucky enough to meet the co-founder John Phillips whilst viewing the exhibition, who gave us an informative tour of the studio. Thus the Artist was inspired to use the lps at some future date, the Patron disappeared to make an immediate purchase, and me, well, I'm the Fixer aren't I?

Normal service will be resumed at The Walpole next week.