Linda Sterling and Jon Savage: The Secret Public Punk Montages, Photography, and Collages, 1976 - 1981

Linda Sterling and Jon Savage: The Secret Public Punk Montages, Photography, and Collages, 1976 - 1981

Monday, May 10, 2010 - Thursday, Jun 10, 2010

Location:
Boo-Hooray c/o Steven Kasher Gallery
 515 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001

The Secret Public, an art fanzine, is one of the primary aesthetic lynchpins in the Manchester punk style. The zine is also an important testament to the early days in the career of fine artist Linder Sterling, whose collection now rests at the Tate, and award-winning author Jon Savage, who later wrote one of the key texts on British punk, England’s Dreaming.

Jon Savage and Linder Sterling published The Secret Public in Manchester during the first month of 1978. It was the second New Hormones product– catalogue number ORG 2– after the Buzzcocks’ already iconic “Spiral Scratch,” and was distributed through Rough Trade and other independent outlets. This was followed by the portfolio Mixed Media Montages published in late 1978. Some of these images originally appeared as flyers and as posters for the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Magazine and Factory Records circa 1977-1980.

Alongside Linder and Savage’s publications, original montages and collages, original posters, flyers and handbills, ephemera from the assembly process were exhibited.

Also on view, were Jon Savage’s photographs of urban decay in London and Manchester circa 1977/1978, some of which provided the basis for his collages and montages, as were Linder’s photographs of the underground working man’s transvestite club, Mr. Dickens, circa 1976.

There was a DJ set by Jon Savage on May the 10th, 2010, playing music of the era that influenced the work. A talk by Savage took place on the following day.

Boo-Hooray published The Secret Public – The Montage Art of Jon Savage and Linder Sterling, limited to 500 copies. We also published two different artists’ editions, a silkscreen deluxe portfolio edition of The Secret Public, and also an artists’ book edition of Jon Savage’s proto-zine London’s Outrage #2, in a single accordion fold with a silkscreen cover and acetate slipcase.

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.