More Nostalgia

'Seventies Project 3: Death Disco 7-inch Picture Sleeve'

oil on canvas/25 x 25cm/September 2019

More from the 1970s-themed project, with another object from the decade providing grist to the painting mill. On this occasion, the source material is, in effect, an item of packaging material, being the cardboard ‘picture sleeve’ housing an object within, a seven-inch vinyl 45rpm ‘single’ featuring Public Image Ltd’s ‘Death Disco’ as its A-side, coupled with ‘No Birds Do Sing’ on the reverse. Dating from 1979, this item thus signifies and encapsulates that latter part of the designated period when I’d reached my nascent post-punk music-obsessive stage that has endured and remained influential since, not least in the current circumstance.

Back in the day, as an aspiring artist/graphic designer and as something I’d started to do often, given the source material I was being attracted to, acquiring and becoming familiar with, this is undoubtedly a record cover I would have copied in drawing form, both the strange, compellingly gruesome image and the text, probably on a number of occasions, so the present painting as made constitutes an update of this process, this time presenting an object of a certain time-worn vintage that happens to feature an image and text upon its surface as a still life. Both the image, which research has unfortunately failed to establish an original artist to give credit to, and the music contained within, particularly ‘Death Disco’ itself, remain, forty years on, striking, harsh and uncompromising, suitably complementary in appearance and sound, and they provide a potent link back to their time.

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