Goodbye to London: Radical Art and Politics in the Seventies

by Sacha Craddock, Peter Cross, Homer Sykes

A decidedly edgy tenor permeated London's counterculture in the 1970s. Pitched against the backdrop of massive unemployment, racism and IRA bombing campaigns, the city took on a bleak look that informed the aesthetics of Derek Jarman's first Super-8 films, Homer Sykes' photographs of the Grunwick strikes, the confrontational eroticism of Margaret Harrison's drawings and Peter Kennard's photomontages for Workers Press. These artists and others are examined in "Goodbye to London," a collage of text and image that revisits the radical politics of that decade and the arts informed by them. It approaches the salient themes of the 1970s through chapters on "Squatters," "Gays," "Workers" and "Art," with archival photographs, and examines the work of the above artists as well as the performances of Stuart Brisley, the photographs of Jo Spence and the films of Marc Karlin. Andrew Wilson contributes an illuminating appraisal of radical art practices in the Seventies.

Genres: History

208 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2010

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timely read that documents a vibrant counterculture glossed over in histories of the period.