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Standing at the nexus of neo-Dada, Performance Art, No Wave, Punk, Fluxus > Mail Art and the as then unnamed aesthetix of the early 80’s is the Image Bank Postcard Show – a box of postcards put together by Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov in 1978. The idea was that the package was ‘an exhibition destined for the mail’, and the 48 images remains a fascinating object of time and place. The roster is distinguished: Ray Johnson, Ed Ruscha, Hermann Nitsch, Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar amongst others. Many of the images are 70’s noir with more than a hint of late 60’s perceptual mind-fuckery and Warhol-style blank refraction. The brain-child of Trasov and Morris (see here pictured as Miss General Idea 1971-83), the Image Bank was a catchy name and a great idea: a collaborative exercise based on sure Mail Art principles that aimed to subvert the traditional gallery structure in an attempt to reshape the world. Soon after the publication of this box, Morris and Trasov were sued by another, existing New York organisation called the Image Bank, and the idea fell into desuetude.

Tags: Ed Ruscha, Fluxus, General Idea, Hermann Nitsch, Image Bank, Mail Art, Michael Morris, No Wave, Performance Art, punk, Ray Johnson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vincent Trasov

Posted on December 16, 2011 at 11:58 am  Comments?

Despite all the histories, there is still much of the 1970’s to explore: the almost forgotten arenas of Mail Art, Performance Art, Postcard Art and Neo-Dada – tracked in the pages of General Idea’s FILE, or VILE magazine, or in the Image Bank’s 1977 “Post Card Show” collection (more of which later). Robert Lambert was part of this world, and in late 1975 produced a brilliant publication called “Egozine” – a visual biography from childhood, through a thorough immersion through pop culture, to his triumphal “Meat Dance” sequence at the party to celebrate the ‘one million and eleventh anniversary of the birth of art’ in February 1975. Extolling the ultimate principle of Pastiche – ‘in a Pastiche Format time is compressed, one only has enough to present the essence, and then move on’ – Lambert tells a still secret history of the 70’s, with plentiful material from his period in the Bon Bons, conceptual mainstays of the Rodney’s English Disco scene, and a pretty good tour through the multiple variations in gay fashions during that period. Like he says, ‘the future is here for those who live it’.

Tags: 70's gay fashions, FILE, General Idea, Mail Art, Performance Art, Postcard Art, Rodney's English Disco, The Bon Bons, the Image Bank, VILE

Posted on August 8, 2011 at 1:09 pm  Comments?