The Secret Public/
The Last Days of the British Underground
1978-1988
ICA
London
UK


By B.Camille

The title of this exhibition is based on Jon Savage and Linder’s fanzine The Secret Public. Writing on ‘little magazines’ in 1977 for Harpers and Queen Peter York suggested that ‘we’re in for one of those periods of adjustment when the balance between energy and innovation and professionalism is re-set…The kids of the post-McLuhan age know that the message is me – screw the medium.’

The cover of the exhibition guide simply states the show’s title, embossed in shiny black on a dark grey ground. On closer inspection this background is an image, depicting a photocopy without original - an image of nothing. Photocopy-ness signifies DIY creativity, self-organisation and a small but dedicated community.

The introductory essay informs us that ‘a dark flowering of creativity occurred in the UK between 1978 and 1988 which was as much an extension of subcultural lifestyle as it was a consequence of artmaking in the traditional sense.’ Over thirty artists are assembled here, from Charles Atlas to Stephen Willats, but curiously absent is the ‘subcultural lifestyle’ prevalent in clubs like Blitz and Taboo. These sites, as well as Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World, a contest open to all, were ‘art school dances’ where every visual detail was a meaningful gesture and every choice was seen as creative act. The New Romantics and their in-house bibles i-D and The Face pushed this idea most confidently through the 80s and although the latter has folded the former continues to ‘originate not imitate’. Flicking through the latest issue you cannot but notice the currency of this period, particularly fashion’s re-running of the absurdist body theatre of the late Leigh Bowery (represented here). The revival has been under way for some time and the ubiquity of many of these artists in recent exhibitions testifies to art’s inseparability from cultural trends.

Upon entering the first gallery we are presented with the influential design work of Peter Saville. His elegant ‘pop as product’ ushered in a PoMo minimalism, and pioneered the now obligatory identity branding of pop stars. His formal sobriety contrasted sharply with the carnivalesque collage of creation, quotation and reference found in the many video works presented here. Building on Punk’s legacy of agitation and uninhibited appropriation, this early use of found footage created ‘a determined and often reckless analysis of the world which surrounds us, constructed pell-mell’ (Derek Jarman). New types of public presence had been identified and would be made use of in the approaching period of cultural commodification - screw the medium.

In a controversial discussion in 1959 Richard Hamilton suggested that ‘the most valued products will be those which emerge from a strong personal conviction and …[they] can be used to design a consumer to the product.’ Presented here is his disquietingly clinical treatment room, with overhead monitor playing a party political broadcast by Margaret Thatcher, speaking as if to an imagined patient. Thatcher’s manufacturing of her public aimed to instil the values of individualism, enterprise and freedom of choice. Can the subjects that pose and play in this exhibition be seen as exemplars of Thatcherism or her subversive citizens?

Outside of this room stands a vitrine of Neo-Naturist ephemera. One headline of a newspaper clipping reads ‘we come here to pose’, and a slideshow presents their naked adventures. The act of posing, as an object/ picture/package, projects a stage and assumes a public. But to what ends? Willats states that in his work on club dancer Julie she is ‘a symbol of the potential in everyone to articulate their own identity, even when faced with seemingly overwhelming social constraints.’

Upstairs Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s ‘Enough Tyranny Recalled (1972-2006)’ is an installation of what appears to be the remains of a glamorous party (glitter, masks, coloured lighting) sound tracked by Roxy Music. With no partygoers evident we become the players in this after-party, performing a melancholic contemplation. While the desire to act may recede in this mournful viewership, downstairs Jon Savage’s desolate black-and-white urban photographs actively picture the failure to act - images of London as a ‘Ghost Town’.

Another notable absentee, Duggie Fields, remarked at the time that ‘most of us are very brutalized by the environment we happen to live in. It’s nobody’s fault particularly, but, certainly what you label glamour, can be a counteracting force. So it can be used and needs to be used as such’.

The curators’ use of this (mainstream) underground does little to assert the ways in which glamour, pose and quotation can be employed as a collective force. This exhibition pictures a retrospectively viewed moment in British history when everything seemed (ideologically) up-for-grabs. Whether it was the ‘strong personal conviction’ of The Conservative Party or ‘this dark flowering of creativity’ that would define the future is, perhaps, dependent on how you define your past. Today, as before, ‘the message is me’.