The legendary stylist and i-D contributor Judy Blame will be at Dover Street Market 5 – 6.30pm today, signing copies of a new book on the reasonably short-lived but iconic and influential late 80s subcultural boutique and art studio, the House of Beauty and Culture (HOBAC), of which he was a member.
HOBAC was founded by footwear designer John Moore in 1986, and alongside Judy Blame, members included the designers Christopher Nemeth and Richard Torry, photographers Mark Lebon and Cindy Palmano, artist Dave Baby and furniture designers Fric and Frack.
An excerpt from author Kasia Maciejowska’s introduction sets the scene:
“The shop embodied an unpolished, narrative, low-tech, dystopian, masculine, radical and postmodern aesthetic. It was specifically urban and expressively communicated the personal experience of living as a young person with artistic aspirations and little income in a post-industrial city. Both the building itself and the objects sold there represented the way in which a generation of countercultural Londoners shaped their identities and attempted to make a living from the innovative reuse of the resources to be found in the city’s cracks. Individuality – the light-hearted kin of Thatcherite individualism – was king at HOBAC. The craftworks possessed different discernable characters, each being intimately reflective of the individual personae that made them, so the holistic body of HOBAC was one that contained various materialities, styles and techniques, unified by a shared critical position. It was a collective, and bore all the erraticisms and symbioses that signify communal living as well as collaborative artistic practice.”
The book launch has been scheduled to coincide with Judy Blame: Never Again, a retrospective exhibition that opened last week at the ICA.
Judy Blame will be signing copies of the House of Beauty and Culture at the Rose Bakery, Dover Street Market, 18-22 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4DG from 5 – 6.30pm Monday 4 July.