Street Level Gallery, Centre for Visual Arts, Cardiff
20 November 1999 - 16 January 2000
Unconvention is an exhibition of paintings, photographs and artefacts inspired by the interests of the Manic Street Preachers, the internationally acclaimed Welsh band. It brings together artists, war photographers, poets, musicians, political activists and social organisations who have influenced and been referenced by the band.
Unconvention is curated by Jeremy Deller, a London-based artist whose projects have often made surprising and enlightening relationships between areas of culture normally thought of as incompatible. Some of his work has been concerned with the modern phenomenon of celebrity. His earlier work around the Manic Street Preachers, The Uses of Literacy (1997) assembled powerful artworks and writings by fans of the band. It highlighted the intense relationship between icon and fan.
The Manics have referred to many modern artists and art movements in their lyrics, album art, interviews and dress sense, from Edvard Munch to Martin Kippenberger. This has created a teenage audience for ideas beyond the scope of formal education. Unconvention brings together important examples of work by Munch, Picasso, Bacon, Pollock, de Kooning, Warhol, Situationist International, Weiner, Kippenberger and Saville drawn together through a concern with self portraiture, celebrity, suffering, war, love and political revolt.
By drawing on the references of pop stars with en extensive and self-taught knowledge of modern art, the exhibition places artworks outside normal gallery frameworks. Documentary photography by Capa, Carter, McCullin and Namuth link paintings to a historical and political context that includes South Wales mining communities, eastern Africa, the Spanish Civil War and Vietnam war. A section dedicated to the Situationist International provides a bridge between Asger Jorn, the Paris student uprisings of May '68 and the Sex Pistols.
One over-arching theme of the exhibition is the analogous relationship between aesthetic and political revolt, a relationship epitomised in the Manics' image: their dress sense has combined cosmetics and political slogans. Their political beliefs stem from their upbringing in the working class Welsh Valleys, while their make-up and effeminate clothing marked them out in what was a tough, conformist community.
The exhibition opens with a lively weekend of free live events. Like the annual Eisteddfod (the celebration of Welsh arts and culture) or a Freshers' Fayre, various organisations will run information stalls. The range of organisations represent both the band's concerns and Wales's local and international perspective. They include Amnesty International, Blaengarw Workmen's Hall, the Welsh Language Society, Spillers Record Shop, Gwent Tertiary College, Reclaim Our Rights, the Samaritans and Manic Street Preachers' fanzines. On Saturday evening the hundred-strong Pendyrus Male Choir will give a special concert of music chronicling the experience of the Welsh mining community and the miners' participation in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.
The spirit of the weekend will continue for the duration of the show with the participating groups' literature on display, a slide carousel documenting the event and a series of talks and live events including talks by Emyr Lewis, Bard of the Eisteddfod; Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers; Jeremy Deller and Amnesty International.