Trout House Replica & So the Red Rose / Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre/ 11 Nov 23 - 17 Feb 24.
Trout House Replica & So the Red Rose / Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre/ 11 Nov 23 - 17 Feb 24.
Starting above, then in a clockwise direction:
Electricity
Gouache & fluorescent poster paint on paper, c.1974. On loan from the artist
A Badge for Every Day of the Week
Gouache, fluorescent poster paint, ink & Letraset on paper, c.1974. On loan from the artist
Rainbow Trout
Gouache & fluorescent poster paint on paper, c.1974. On loan from Gemma Brewin
These three works were all painted in about 1974, which means I would have been 17 or recently turned 18. This was right at the end of my 6th year at grammar school as I was preparing to go to Reading University to study typography. These are three of a number of works I painted at a similar time so it’s difficult to recall the precise production sequence.
What these paintings do make clear is that I had already started to show an interest in the use of letterforms and graphic symbols in my work. At this time I was almost exclusively using gouache and fluorescent poster paint to get a flat, hard-edged graphic feel to all my compositions. I often used a ruling pen and compass to get sharp lines with the gouache. Compositionally I was drawing inspirations from numerous musical and technical sources, and investing them with a psychedelic Pop Art sensibility.
The fluorescent colours and geometric patterns, such as the rainbows that feature on each scale of the Rainbow Trout, were my attempt to capture some of the visual effects I had experienced when I started taking LSD about a year before. The electronic components reflect my interest in synthesisers and electronica, and a fascination for circuit diagrams and electrical components of all kinds.
Electricity is quite obviously inspired by the front cover of Captain Beefheart’s legendary and iconic, ‘Trout Mask Replica’ album. It was produced by Frank Zappa, on whose album ‘Hot Rats’ I had first heard Beefheart sing. It had been released a few years before I first heard it and subsequently decided to copy it in this painting.The title lettering is a direct reference to the actual song Electricity from Beefheart’s debut album ‘Safe As Milk’.
The composition of RainbowTrout is self-explanatory, but both it and the trout mask depicted in Electricity have psychedelic starbursts surrounding their eyes, again emulating the visual effects experienced while tripping on acid.
In A Badge for Every Day of the Week the sequence of seven images was a sketch for a proposed set of badges, literally building up an image each day of the week, and of course hinting at my graphic design career ahead. At school I had been painting images on plain white cardboard badges bought from the stationers which I would wear myself, and sometimes sold to friends. The image of a strawberry was one of my most popular designs. Inevitably then, Captain Beefheart is seen wearing one such badge on his lapel, subliminally noting that Beefheart also quotes lines from John Lennon’s masterpiece Strawberry Fields in a lyrical homage that can be heard on his album ‘Strictly Personal’... “Strawberry Fields Forever”.
Malcolm Garrett is a British graphic designer, and Creative Director of Images&Co, a communications design consultancy based in London, UK. He is Ambassador for Manchester School of Art and co-founder of the annual Design Manchester festival, which has run since 2013.
@beingmalcolmgarrett