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Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years at London's Barbican Art Gallery.

This Summer marks two 30 year anniversaries: the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and the release of The Sex Pistols’ irreverent single God Save the Queen with its infamous collage cover by Jamie Reid. To coincide with these landmark events, Barbican Art Gallery is staging a major exhibition 'Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years'.

Pictured (right): 'The Loner' by Tony Oursler.

Panic Attack! explores art produced from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s in Britain and America, when both countries were a breeding ground for the subcultures of punk and post-punk. Although the punk movement is most famously known for its music, fashion and graphics, this exhibition throws new light on the period, exposing a vibrant art scene that also emerged during these years, most notably in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Panic Attack! brings together over one hundred and fifty works by around thirty artists, including photography, painting, performance, film, video and other media and demonstrates how their work embodies many of the concerns and attitudes associated with the punk years.

Pictured (left): '(Untitled) Your Comfort Is My Silence' by Barbara Kruger.

Hey Ho, Let's Go!

The Oil Crisis of 1973 provoked a severe economic recession in Britain and America, exacerbating economic inequalities and political tensions in both countries. The artists in Panic Attack! represent the punk zeitgeist in a number of ways, and one strand in the exhibition looks at artists who made work with direct political intent. These include British artist Victor Burgin, who created two cycles of image-text pieces, UK76 and US77, reflecting the fractured social landscape of the two countries at this time.

Many artists turned to the imagery of urban decay, often using it as a symbol of public crisis. Stephen Willats made quasi-documentary and collaborative works with the inhabitants of slum estates on the edges of London. Gordon Matta-Clark made art from the fabric of the city itself, creating installations by literally cutting into Manhattan’s post-industrial landscape. John Stezaker created a series of surreal collages using postcards of Piccadilly Circus, while Robert Longo in New York made his celebrated Men in the Cities series, showing smartly dressed figures in states of trauma and collapse.

Pictured (right): 'Eros VII' by John Stezaker.

Other artists who drew on the urban fabric to make their work included Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger in New York, who played with the forms of public address found on posters and billboards, and British artists Tony Cragg and Bill Woodrow, who both made work from found objects and detritus.

The language of the urban landscape is also seen in the work of New Yorkers Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, both figures associated with the emergence of graffiti art.

Cindy Sherman

The 1970s saw the rise of both feminism and the gay liberation movement, and there was a flowering of art involving performance and the body, as well as a confrontational exploration of issues such as sexuality and violence. The Violent Tapes of 1975 by Argentinean-born artist David Lamelas consists of a series of ‘stills’ from a non-existent film depicting a violent chase through the streets of an imagined city of the near future. In Cindy Sherman’s famous series, Untitled Film Stills,1977-80, the artist appears as different female characters, using costumes, wigs and make-up to transform herself.

Some artists, including Paul McCarthy in Los Angeles and the group COUM Transmissions in London, pushed at the limits of what could be represented within performance art. COUM, which included the artists Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, was responsible for the infamous 'Prostitution' exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in 1976, which included sexually explicit imagery and which provoked a Tory MP to call COUM the ‘wreckers of civilisation’.

Pictured (left): 'Jordans Dance' (video still) by Derek Jarman.

Panic Attack! also explores the many crossovers between the world of art and music at this time. Robert Mapplethorpe was a contemporary of the first generation of punk stars in New York - most notably Patti Smith - while at the same time, London-based filmmaker Derek Jarman (Blue, The Last of England, Jubilee, Sebastiane) was making films with the punk icon Jordan.

Nan Goldin’s breakthrough work, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, was shown at number of New York clubs in the early eighties, while British filmmaker and artist Cerith Wyn Evans made the film Epiphany, 1984, featuring Leigh Bowery, the London clubbing luminary celebrated for his outrageous costumes and body modifications.

A 224-page book accompanies the exhibition - also called Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years - edited by Mark Sladen and Ariella Yedgar. The book features text and essays by Rosetta Brooks, David Bussel, Carlo McCormick, Mark Sladen, Tracey Warr, Andrew Wilson and Ariella Yedgar and is published by Merrell (RRP £29.95).

Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years is at London's Barbican Art Gallery until 9 September.

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