DIDN’T WE HAVE A NICE TIME !
Paul Weller: Forty+ years of style, substance and maximum rock & roll.
On Saturday 25 May 2019 we launch a new exhibition.
The subject? Mr John William Weller Jr—Paul Weller to you and me.
We will be covering the whole shooting match: The Jam, Style Council, the solo years. I’m very excited about this one – we have assembled a collection of incredible work. It’s going to be a celebration—scratch that—a Wellerbration.
The exhibition was due to end on 29 June 2019, but in response to a deluge of requests from Paul Weller fans from all around the world who are going to be in the UK for his Summer concerts, we are going to run it until 13 July 2019.
There is no charge for admission – because all the artwork in the exhibition is available to purchase.
Scroll down to view the exhibition contents.
Gallery interiors
A selection of photographs taken of the gallery installation
Pennie Smith
Pennie Smith is one of this country’s most acclaimed music photographers.
She rarely exhibits her work, and I am delighted that Pennie has agreed to include some of her most important Jam/Paul Weller photographs in the exhibition. Each photograph is made by hand in the darkroom from Pennie’s original negatives on 16 x 20 inch heavyweight silver gelatin paper, and signed on the front under the image area by Pennie to authenticate the work.
The All Mod Cons Rickenbacker
One of the new pieces in the exhibition is a photograph of a guitar.
It is not just any photograph—and it is not just any guitar. For the first time, we present an ultra-large-format, three-dimensional photograph of the actual Rickenbacker 330 that appeared on the back cover of The Jam’s All Mod Cons album.
On the gallery wall, it measures 175cm / 69 inches long. This beautiful artwork can be made in a bespoke size to suit your wallspace—in a size up to a phenomenal 250cm / 98 inches—with pin sharp resolution. That’s just over eight feet long.
It doesn’t have to be that big of course, as this is a bespoke service built around you, and the size that works for you.
The Classic Concert Series #3 – The Jam
We can now reveal the third in our series of handmade limited edition letterpress prints celebrating classic live performances.
With our Paul Weller exhibition underway at the gallery, there really could only be one subject. The new print celebrates the end of an era—the final live public performance by The Jam on 11 December 1982 in Brighton.
Taking concert set lists as the reference point, each limited edition print is made by hand on a vintage letterpress using movable type—as ‘analogue’ as it gets. The process builds up colours in layers, with each print subtlety different.
Each limited edition print in the series is individually numbered and made on paper measuring 40 x 64 cm / 15.75 x 25 inches. The paper is a 270 gsm heavyweight textured paper by G.F Smith from their iconic Colorplan range.
The edition size is 75 worldwide. The whole edition is printed at the outset, and unframed prints are in stock and ready to ship from 31 May 2019.
The Jam: setlist print: Last Concert, Brighton 1982
Derek D’Souza
Derek D’Souza was a 22-year-old fan when he took the photograph of the Jam that appeared on the cover of their single, “Absolute Beginners”.
Derek D’Souza began photographing his favourite band, The Jam, in the late 70s. Attending their concerts across London, he would take pictures at every opportunity, sending the best ones in to their fan club. His photographs, taken with a low-budget, manual camera from the midst of crowds in low-lit venues, caught the attention of Paul Weller. Two years later, Paul Weller’s mum contacted D’Souza and he was commissioned to take photos for the band’s 1981 single “Absolute Beginners”. One of Derek’s images from that day was added to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.
Brian Aris
Brian Aris began his photographic career as a photojournalist. Over the course of his career, a series of frontline assignments took him around the world.
He then decided on a complete change of direction and opened a studio in London where he started photographing fashion and glamour models for newspapers and magazines. At the same time he gradually broadened his studio work to include pop and rock stars such as Blondie, The Jam, The Clash, The Boomtown Rats, Roxy Music and The Police. And after three years he turned away from the model world to concentrate on the music industry that was exploding in Britain.
Keith Haynes
Keith’s work explores pop art in its purest form, using album sleeves, record labels, badges and, of course, beautiful vinyl records – the hard currency of pop culture – to create striking and witty pop art pieces with a strong graphic design aesthetic. As luck would have it, Keith is a passionate Jam and Paul Weller fan, and has created some beautiful new pieces for this exhibition.
Martyn Goddard
Martyn Goddard made a number of album cover and single sleeve photographs for The Jam.
After a period assisting acclaimed photographer Gered Mankowitz, Martyn Goddard became a regular face on the new wave music scene of the seventies and early eighties.
Here Martyn recalls shooting the In The City cover session. “It was decided to shoot in my studio in Kensington Church Street using a couple of 8′ X 4′ flats tiled in 4 inch white Crystal tiles. I can’t remember whether it was budget or time constraints but Bill (Smith- the art director at Polydor Records) and I tiled the flats the morning of the session, 2nd March 1977, and it was Bill who took the black spray paint and in one attempt produced the iconic logo on the white ceramic tiles as the glue was setting.”
Martyn also has fond memories of shooting the ‘Down in the Tube Station at Midnight’ single cover on location in 1978. “We chose Bond Street tube station on the Central line, I think because Bill Smith knew the station well from his daily commute. We waited to late evening before our raid on the station as this was going to be a quick shoot i.e. we didn’t have permission!”
You can see a few examples below – but check out a larger selection of his Jam images here, and his limited edition Jam book here
Gered Mankowitz
Legendary British music photographer Gered Mankowitz captured The Jam under The Westway in 1977 for the cover of their second album, This is the Modern World.
Promo video for Absolute Beginners
Gered Mankowitz and designer Bill Smith made a promotional video for The Jam’s single ‘Absolute Beginners’ in 1981. In the end the band didn’t use it, and shot something else. Gered contributed a copy of the film to the Somerset House exhibition, About The Young Idea, where it was played on a loop on a period TV set. These two photographs were taken by Gered on the set for the video shoot.
Jamie Byrne – All Mod Cons
All Mod Cons by The Jam is the subject of Jamie Byrne’s latest graphic novel album commission.
“…it’s not only several light years ahead of anything they’ve done before but also the album that’s going to catapult The Jam right into the front rank of international rock and roll; one of the handful of truly essential rock albums of the last few years.” NME review, 1978, by Charles Shaar Murray
I can’t stress enough how important All Mod Cons is for fans of The Jam. I know because I am one. I have been listening to this album for almost forty years. I still can’t quite believe that this record, which I first heard as a fifteen-year-old, is one that I go back to quite so often.
We have been working with artist Jamie Byrne for a while now, and I am delighted that Jamie has created a new artwork for the exhibition. Taking inspiration from the tracks on All Mod Cons, Jamie has created this beautiful piece in his very popular graphic novel style, with each panel representing a song on the album.
Gallery visitors will be able to see the original, which measures a whopping 100 x 100cm / 40 x 40 inches, and is made on ultra high gloss coated aluminium. Limited edition versions in smaller sizes are available to purchase as well.
Peter Anderson
Peter Anderson photographed The Style Council in the early years, from their formation in 1983
Peter Anderson attended Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, and then went on to work as the staff photographer at NME in the 1980s. He also frequently contributed to other publications including The Face, iD and Rolling Stone and has worked on advertising and documentary projects. He made some of the best know early Style Council images, many of which featured on their single and album sleeves.
He remembers his time photographing the band fondly: ” The photographs were made with a lot of irony, humour, parody, pastiche and artifice.”
Olly Ball
Olly Ball made the cover photograph for The Style Council’s second studio album, Our Favourite Shop
Olly’s recollections of the session are fascinating:
“We shot the cover of Our Favourite Shop on a Sunday afternoon in London in April or May 1985, at Bow Street Studios in Covent Garden. I was based there for ten years.”
“I wasn’t a rock photographer as such. I mostly shot magazine editorial in those days. I was offered the job because Simon Halfon, the designer, had seen some photos I’d shot for the Observer Magazine Living Extra. These were pictures of rooms based on a TV programme; so we’d have Jewel In The Crown on the TV and all the props and food would be Indian. The other themes were Dallas, Arena and The Tube.”
“Most of the stuff in the shop belonged to Paul and Mick, but the snooker cue and George Best coat hanger are mine. Fran Crawley was the stylist and she supplied the counter, book-rack etc. The set was built by my assistant, and great friend, Ross Kerridge with Peter Chatterton. Paul and Mick dressed most of the set, but we were all involved, and I shot it on a Mamiya RB6x7 on a 90mm lens.”
“I’m happy to say it went straight to number 1 in the album charts, but it remains the only album cover I ever shot.”
Julian Broad
Julian Broad started working with Paul Weller in the early 1990s, and made the photographs that appeared on three of his solo albums.
Photographer and filmmaker Julian Broad started his career working as assistant to photographer Derrick Richards before spending two years as assistant to Lord Snowdon. A selection of Broad’s work is held in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His photographs appear on Heliocentric (2000), Sonik Kicks (2012) and Saturns Pattern (2015).
Lawrence Watson
Lawrence Watson has had unparalleled access to photograph Paul Weller throughout his solo career.
You can see his work on many of Paul Weller’s albums and singles, and his photographs documenting the first few years of Paul’s solo career were published in the 1995 book ‘Days Lose Their Names And Time Slips Away’. It all started for Lawrence in the late 1980’s, as the Style Council were approaching the end of the road. Lawrence made the cover photograph of their final studio album, Confessions of a Pop Group, and hasn’t stopped since.
At times you could be forgiven for thinking that Lawrence wasn’t actually there as Paul is so relaxed, natural and oblivious to the camera. That doesn’t happen by accident–it’s all about Lawrence’s skill with a lens and how he makes his subjects feel. It means that the viewer gets that magical feeling that they are right there too.
The Temple of Wax
