Image:Nigel Waymouth and Shelia Cohen Outside Granny Takes A Trip, c. 1966
Exhibition: 9th Sept – 2nd Oct
A major retrospective of the sixties work of Nigel Waymouth, including works created with Michael English as part of legendary British design duo Hapshash & the Coloured Coat, will open September 9th at Idea Generation Gallery.
Hapshash, one of the most famous British design collectives of the 20th Century, are best known for their psychedelic posters created for the biggest underground music venue of its time, the legendary UFO Club. The club made for a memorable venue for performances by Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Jeff Beck, The Move and The Incredible String
Band, heroes who all truly embraced the free-spirited culture which has become so indelibly linked with the ’60s – an ethos visually manifest in the Hapshash posters, which themselves have become seminal works in the pantheon of poster art.
Nigel Waymouth was first introduced to Michael English in 1966, when he was designing the shop front for his radical new vintage boutique on the Kings Road: Granny Takes a Trip. In a twist of coincidence, Michael was concurrently designing the shop front for another store, Hung on You. Born from this casual meeting was one of the most successful creative partnerships of the era. A partnership that would both define and launch an entirely new art market: the sale of commercial posters as art.
The new duo’s first collaborative work was a promotional poster for the radical underground UFO Club. Joe Boyd, co-founder of UFO explains:
“They’d never met each other and we basically locked them in a room and said ‘Come out with a poster!’ and they came up with the best thing they ever did.”
The result was a subversive mixture of avant-garde and art nouveau, a signature style that would come to be the visual definition of psychedelia forevermore. Huge silk-screened reproductions of their iconic posters will fill the entirety of one of the Gallery’s soaring 20 foot walls.
By 1967, Waymouth and English had established themselves as one of the most progressive design collectives of the time and called themselves, Hapshash & the Coloured Coat. Predominant in all the fashionable circles, their psychedelic yet romantic style soon became a familiar trademark. Despite a comparatively short collaborative period
of eighteen months or so, the duo built a culture around themselves that embraced not only art and design, but also music, lifestyle and fashion.
In the beginning: Granny Takes a Trip Opened by Nigel Waymouth, Sheila Cohen and John Pearse in 1966 on the Kings Road, London, Granny Takes a Trip was far more than a vintage clothing store. It was a revolutionary fusion of art, culture and clothing. Offering something completely unique to both the worlds of fashion and retail, it proved itself more a means to artistic expression than a business venture.
From the early ’60s, boutiques were popping up all over London – Mary Quant, Biba and Carnaby Street were already established when Granny Takes a Trip was launched, and the boutique phenomenon was doing for fashion what rock stars were doing for the music industry. What Granny Takes a Trip did was to forge a link between the two, expressing in both music and style the aspirations and free-spirited values of the generation.
Nigel Waymouth designed the iconic shop fronts for Granny Takes a Trip, making the radical fusion of art and fashion complete. Above the door of the shop was a sign, underlining the concept absolutely: “One should either be a work of art of wear a work of art.” (Oscar Wilde). This sign, alongside other ephemera from the boutique, features as part of the Idea Generation Gallery exhibition.
A new partnership: Psychedelic Posters & the UFO Club Hapshash & the Coloured Coat often designed images with a strong Art Nouveau influence from Czech artist Alphonse Mucha. Their posters were usually brightly coloured, characterised by curling lines and curved shapes.
Mainly for the UK Underground UFO Club, a venue opened in Tottenham Court Road by Joe Boyd and John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, these psychedelic designs were used to promote the major bands and performers of the time, including Pink Floyd, The Incredible String Band, Tomorrow and Procol Harum.
“At UFO, we wanted to follow the San Francisco example and create our own posters. Thanks to Nigel Waymouth and Michael English, I think it is fair to say we surpassed the Californians. History has spoken!”
Joe Boyd
