D.I.Y or DIE! Handmade Zines, Record Covers, and Posters from Punk to Reggae

Also featured in the exhibition are original paste-ups of punk fanzines from the collections of John Ingham, Geoffrey Weiss, and Bruce Griffiths and a selection of hand-printed Australian, British, and American punk rock posters all spanning the years 1976 to 1983. We are showing original stencils from the Crass archive. These stencils are the ground zero of recent urban wall art. They were hand cut and utilized to full effect for the détournement of advertising billboards on the London Underground. They were also the origin for the backs of tens of thousands of punker leather motorcycle jackets.

Exhibit curator Johan Kugelberg says:

These materials on display highlight the genius of the self-starter impulse. Back in the day before these choices had become aestheticized, lots of striking visual solutions and epiphanies took place. I think people who see these items will feel pretty damn inspired to DIY themselves. Hopefully not to death.

BOO-HOORAY exhibits both at home in New York City as well as internationally. We also stage collaborative exhibitions with the Hayward Gallery and Rough Trade in London, Tsutaya Daikanyama, Hysteric Glamour, and United Arrows in Tokyo, Galleri Operatingplace in Stockholm, Colette in Paris, PopMontreal in Montreal, Mishka Los Angeles, Printed Matter at both MOCA/LA and PS1/NYC, and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, the New York Public Library, the Grolier Club, and Milk Gallery in New York.

Boo-Hooray exhibitions have included shows featuring Larry Clark, The Velvet Underground, Ray Johnson, Afrika Bambaataa, Jonas Mekas, Ed Sanders, Linder Sterling and Jon Savage, Spencer Sweeney, Houston Rap, private press vinyl, Wallace Berman, anarcho-punk group Crass, Jason Polan, Jack Smith, cult-filmmaker Ed Wood, and Situationist Times editor Jacqueline de Jong.

The exhibitions are drawn from cultural archives that Boo-Hooray excavates, organizes, and places in institutions such as Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University’s Division of Rare Manuscript Collections, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.