Hapshash Takes a Trip

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UFO Coming (1967) by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat.

It’s always difficult to choose a favourite from the posters that Nigel Waymouth and the late Michael English produced under the name Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, their standards remained high (so to speak) throughout their partnership. But I always liked the ejaculating penis butterfly on this early design for Joe Boyd’s UFO club, a detail which would have given Aubrey Beardsley a chuckle and which is probably unique in art. The gorgeous Hapshash posters receive another airing next month in an exhibition at the Idea Generation Gallery, London, entitled Hapshash Takes a Trip: The Sixties Work of Nigel Waymouth:

Waymouth’s own archive plays a major part in the retrospective. Kept privately for decades and rarely seen since their first creation in the late ’60s, the artist’s personal collection features works made as part of Hapshash and his designs for Granny Takes a Trip. Furthermore it contains his own album covers, photographs, press clippings and magazines. This extraordinary collection unites rare works with rare moments, through photographs never before seen in public.

The exhibition opens on September 9th. There’s more detail on the press release (PDF) including a promise that “Huge silk-screened reproductions of their iconic posters will fill the entirety of one of the Gallery’s soaring 20 foot walls.”

The exhibition title alludes to the celebrated King’s Road boutique Granny Takes A Trip whose series of striking shopfronts were decorated by Waymouth before and during his partnership with Michael English. The Look posted some pictures of Waymouth’s 1947 Dodge decor earlier this week.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The Dukes declare it’s 25 O’Clock!
Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar
Michael English, 1941–2009
Max (The Birdman) Ernst
The Look presents Nigel Waymouth
The New Love Poetry

The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream revisited

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left: event poster by Hapshash & the Coloured Coat.
right: International Times 14-Hour Technicolor Dream special issue, April 1967.

The ICA goes psychedelic, baby. Lucky Londoners get to gorge themselves on this lot next Saturday.

2007 is a year of many anniversaries: twenty years since Acid House, thirty since the release of Never Mind The Bollocks, forty since Sgt. Pepper’s and fifty since the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.

One event that gets far less publicity, but that was at the heart of everything that came both before and after it also sees its 40th anniversary this year. The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream took place on April the 29th 1967 and was the UK’s first mass-participational all-night psychedelic freakout!

Organised and in a matter of weeks, the event was held in the cavernous confines of Alexandra Palace. The vision of Hoppy Hopkins and Miles, the night saw a glorious mingling of freaks, beats, mods, squares, proto-punks, pop stars and heads come together to dance, trip, love and be.

To celebrate the anniversary, the ICA presents Our Technicolor Dream—a one-off multi-media event that features an array of cult 60s films and animation, full-on psychedelic lightshows, groovy DJs, avant-garde theatre, a Q&A session with the leading lights of the 60s underground and live music with The Amazing World of Arthur Brown, The Pretty Things, Circulus and Mick Farren!

Tell It Like It Was: The Round Table Speaks: Joe Boyd, Miles, Hoppy Hopkins & John Dunbar.
Freak Out, Ethel! An Evening of Musical Mayhem: Malcolm Boyle’s play plus The Amazing World of Arthur Brown, Circulus, The Pretty Things and Optikinetics lightshow.
Boyle Family Films With Music by The Soft Machine
Weird and Wonderful 60s Animation: Films by Jan Lenica, Jan Svankmajer, Walerian Borowczyk, Chris Marker and Ryan Larkin.
What’s A Happening? “90 minutes of rare, lost and unseen psychedelic masterpieces”.

Retrospective newspaper features: The Independent | The Times

Previously on { feuilleton }
Verner Panton’s Visiona II
The art of Yayoi Kusama
All you need is…
Sans Soleil
Summer of Love Redux
The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda
Oz magazine, 1967–73
Strange Things Are Happening, 1988–1990