Simon Larbalestier

This is our first exhibition in our beautiful new gallery space at 8 Piccadilly Arcade, London SW1Y 6NH - Don't go to Birmingham for this one!

It’s a complete pleasure to share details of this exhibition with you, not only because it features some incredible work by acclaimed photographer Simon Larbalestier, but also because this will be the first exhibition in our new premises in central London. We have taken the plunge and have opened a permanent gallery space in the heart of Piccadilly.

If you know the music of Boston band the Pixies, then you will already be very familiar with Simon Larbalestier's work, as his photographs feature on the covers of their five studio albums between 1987 and 1991, and a clutch of their singles. Chances are you will actually know the Pixies music without realizing it: their songs have recently been used as sonic background on ads by VISA and Channel Five in the UK.

Recently, Simon contributed a brand new collection of photographs taken in 2008/9 to a lavish Pixies box set project called Minotaur. A big beast weighing in at just under 10 kilos, Minotaur includes all the Pixies studio albums on CD and 180 gram vinyl, but it is much more than that. It is actually a piece of art in its own right, and deserves to be shown in a gallery setting: so that’s what we’ll be doing. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to see Minotaur, and purchase a special version signed by Simon while stocks last.

With Minotaur on release, and the Pixies reformed and touring Europe this Summer, including gigs in London in early June, it seemed to us like the perfect time to celebrate Simon's work. In the exhibition, we are bringing together, for the first time anywhere in the world, two distinct yet complementary bodies of work: Firstly, the historic studio based photographs that appeared on Pixies record sleeves from the 1980s and 90’s, and secondly the new images created in South East Asia in 2008/9 specifically for Minotaur.

• Simon’s signed limited edition photographs are available to own in a range of sizes and visitors will be able to see examples of each of the sizes in the flesh on the walls, including a spectacular six ft high version of Simon’s classic Surfer Rosa photograph that appears on the cover of this catalogue. We are also showing some extremely precious original polaroids from Simon’s Pixies album cover sessions from his personal collection. These have not been shown in public before.

If all that wasn't enough, we can also share with you some details of two important new projects that we are launching in conjunction with this landmark exhibition.

Tablet Editions : fabulous souvenirs for your actual desktop

First up, we are offering an inaugural range of very affordable miniaturized three dimensional works of art called Tablet Editions. Tablets come in beautiful presentation boxes and are designed to be displayed straight from the box and onto your desk, shelf, or cabinet: wherever you want them close at hand. Four of Simon’s images are available to order in Tablet format. These Tablets really are very special and we think they are going to be a welcome innovation on the collectibles scene. You can read about them here

An app for your new ipad.

Secondly, we are offering an app for iPhone and iPad which will enable viewers who can’t make it to the gallery show to not only see the images, but also find out about the great stories behind them. We expect this to be ready in early May, and we'll be posting details online as soon as we can.

Further detail

The Pixies are one of the most pioneering bands of the late 80s and influenced countless musicians, including Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Radiohead. The covers of their five studio albums, all of which featured the surreal photographs of Simon Larbalestier, with graphic design by Vaughan Oliver, were a vital part of the band’s image.

Oliver’s graphic design work has already been the subject of a number of exhibitions. The purpose of this retrospective is to focus on Simon Larbalestier’s photographs in isolation, stripping away the design element and showing them as a coherent body of work in their own right.

” If there were a 'fifth Pixie,' it would have been Simon - his work so suited what they were doing.” Vaughan Oliver, Pixies graphic designer

Simon Larbalestier chose to include a macabre photograph in his final degree show at London’s Royal College of Art in 1987. Inspired by Gustave Flaubert’s haunting work The Temptation of St Antony, Larbalestier had created an elaborate and slightly unsettling scene in which a bald headed man with an outrageously hairy back sat with his back to the camera, face obscured. Parts of the scene covered by a silk drape, into which a fish had been nailed.

Pixies graphic designer Vaughan Oliver attended the show, saw the image and knew instantly that it fitted perfectly with the brief he had received from Pixies front man, Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis). That photograph was used on the cover of the 1987 Pixies EP Come On Pilgrim.

Larbalestier’s photographs subsequently appeared on the covers of the Pixies four studio albums;

• Surfer Rosa, featuring a beautiful dancer in an elaborately staged set featuring dark drapes, a fish, a crucifix and a smashed Pixies guitar head;
• Doolittle, with its halo-clad stuffed Monkey on the cover, together with a series of portraits referencing the macabre lyrics and showing textures, decay and desolation in a lavish inner lyric booklet;
• Bossanova, with its Pixies planet and finally Trompe Le Monde, with its surreal bulls’ eyes

Decay, isolation and the visual impression of time ravaged objects were key elements in Larbalestier’s work, and photographs from this early period were created using what Larbalestier describes as his ‘scientific approach’. This was characterised by elaborately staged sets, where images were shot mainly on black and white film on large static cameras, and then sepia toned later in the darkroom to add feeling and atmosphere. Early work such as Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa were shot on Polaroid type 55 film, which yields both a positive print and a negative image that can be used in an enlarger. The distinctive patterned borders of type 55 film served to heighten the sense of decay and otherworldliness.

“Everything about the Pixies imagery was constructed, often built as a small set as in the Doolittle series or a life size collage set for the Surfer Rosa series. Everything was sourced and built from scratch in front of the camera lens. The vision was a constructed one - not a document of real life.” Simon Larbalestier

The exhibition features rare images from these early sessions, and visitors to the gallery exhibition will also be able to see, for the first time, Simon’s original type 55 polaroids from Come on Pilgrim, and Surfer Rosa. These original polaroids have never been exhibited before, and include a number of unpublished outtakes from those important sessions.

Minotaur
On the face of it, the contrast with Larbalestier’s recent work on the Minotaur project could not be greater, but in many respects there are strong parallels.

Minotaur is the title of the recently released Pixies’ box set: a collaboration between The Pixies, Vaughan Oliver, Simon Larbalestier, and US box set pioneers Artists in Residence.

 "I like that the sheer size of Minotaur moves it into the category of being an art object as opposed to being just a CD box set. It's not necessarily something you'd put next to your stereo, but on your marble coffee table with your other art books." -- Pixies' Charles Thompson ( Black Francis)

Minotaur pushes the boundaries of how the Pixies body of music can be presented as a lavish and coherent whole. Oliver and Larbalestier have used the same music as inspiration, but applied a 21st century perspective to create a completely new body of photography and designs for Minotaur. Oliver set out to give Minotaur a coherent look and feel, rather than simply putting five album packages, that were designed at different times under varying circumstances, into one box. This was an opportunity to go back through the themes and the ideas covered at the time of the five albums, and treat them in a deeper, more substantial way.
Larbalestier approached Minotaur using very different techniques to those used for the original Pixies' album sessions. For Minotaur, he worked on location in South East Asia, chosen because it was perfect setting for the macabre and surreal images he was looking for. He used a point-and-shoot digital camera, and worked in colour as much as black and white. Working outside the studio setting gave him access to people, places and material that he simply would not have been able to photograph if he had adopted his previous ‘scientific approach’. 

“Simon shot some amazing images that I think will surpass what we did first time around. His new work is full of power, it carries a very strong visual poetry. Simon has the ability to imbue the inanimate with emotion, with sensibilities." Vaughan Oliver

Despite the differences in approach, there are common threads running between the original images and the new pieces. A neon sign in the form of a bare breasted dancer is very much a 2008 take on Surfer Rosa. Unusual juxtapositions of subject matter, religion, decay, death and texture still play a key part. Hair is a good textural example: the two photographs that bookend the show chronologically  (1986’s Nimrod’s Son - that man with the hairy back used on Come on Pilgrim - and 2009’s Minotaur - a close up portrait of a bull, and the last photograph Simon took in Thailand) both feature hair in abundance.