Exhibition
Better Books: Art, Anarchy and Apostasy
29 Jun 2012 – 29 Jul 2012
Event times
Thurs - Sun 12-6 pm, last friday of the month until 8pm.
Address
- 210 Bellenden Road
- London
- SE15 4BW
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Buses: 12, 36, 436
- Train: Peckham Rye Station
An archival exhibition including film, sound, installation and events presenting a portrait of the Better Books bookshop, a hub of the London avant-garde during the late 1950s and the 1960s.
About
In the 1950s and 1960s, London underwent a cultural revolution, which altered forever the trajectory of contemporary art and gave rise to a radical re-formulation of the possible in artistic production. United in their distrust of culture, the emerging generation of post-war artists, poets and writers were searching for new ways of responding to their alienation from the previous generation and the smothering geopolitical anxiety of the cold war.Many of these artists found each other while taking refuge at Tony Godwin's Charing Cross bookshop, Better Books. Under the successive management of Bill Butler, Barry Miles, and Bob Cobbing, Better Books became guardian and sanctuary, platform and voice for the explosion of radical gesture in London, providing platform, meeting space, idea generator and voice for a host of avant-garde artists, poets, filmmakers, musicians, and writers.
Featuring work and material from Gustav Metzger, John Latham, Jeff Nuttall, Stephen Dwoskin, Bruce Lacey, Keith Musgrove, Islwyn Watkins, Bob Cobbing, Criton Tomazos, Dave Trace, Pip Benveniste, Heather Richardson, Jeff Keen, Alexander Trocchi, Jennifer Pike, Annea Lockwood, Werner Schrieb, Jeffrey Shaw, Tjebbe van Tijen, John Sharkey, Group H, Writers Forum and more.
Organised by independent curator and writer Rozemin Keshvani.
