The final artwork by Sex Pistols cover artist Jamie Reid
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(Credits: Far Out / Gerard O’Brien / Jamie Reid / The Arcova Trust & Enter Gallery)
On April 25th, 2024, Brighton’s Enter Gallery opened an exhibition celebrating the work of Jamie Reid, the artist best known for his work on Sex Pistols’ record covers. Titled Jamie Reid: A Lifetime of Radical Gestures, the exhibition draws highlights from the artist’s Rogue Materials series, which spans the artist’s half-century career from 1972 to 2021.
Tragically, we had to say goodbye to one of our most iconic and subversive 20th-century pop artists in August 2023. Reid’s death was confirmed in a joint statement from his gallerist, John Marchant, and his family. The statement described Reid as an “artist, iconoclast, anarchist, punk, hippie, rebel and romantic. Jamie leaves behind a beloved daughter, Rowan, a granddaughter, Rose, and an enormous legacy.” While no cause of death was disclosed, the artist was 76 years old.
After enrolling in Wimbledon Art School at age 16, Reid moved to Croydon Art School, where he met the future Sex Pistols manager and fashion designer Malcolm McLaren. Through the early 1970s, he developed a distinctive style that found a spiritual home on Sex Pistols record sleeves in 1976.
Reid’s notable works include the iconic pink and yellow text on the cover of their only album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, as well as the controversial cover for the hit single God Save the Queen, which defaced Peter Grugeon’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Additionally, Reid was responsible for the iconic shattered picture frame ‘Pretty Vacant’ and the modified comic strip for ‘Holidays in the Sun’.
The Rogue Materials series, as represented at the Enter Gallery exhibition, celebrates these early designs but also demonstrates Reid’s versatility and ongoing influence outside the music industry. Over the years, he branched out into conceptual pieces, drawings and paintings, almost always carrying with him a wry smile and a discerning jab at the status quo.
Seen throughout much of Reid’s oeuvre is a cut-and-paste lettering style evocative of ransom correspondence. He first developed this approach while creating content for the countercultural publication Suburban Press, which he co-founded with Jeremy Brook and Nigel Edwards in 1970. Reid’s interest in alternative politics and counterculture led him to an early graphic design job working on the 1974 book Leaving the 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International.
The week-long exhibition at Enter Gallery celebrates Reid’s entire career, though the main attraction is a limited silkscreen print of his final approved artwork. In its exhibition debut, the swansong creation portrays a torn Union Jack held together by punk-inspired safety pins, paying tribute to the 1976 Sex Pistols single release, ‘Anarchy in the UK’. Reid and his foundation, The Arcova Trust, endorsed the flags and the artwork before his passing.
See some photographs I took during a visit to the exhibition on its opening evening below.
