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Blur 21: The Exhibition

Londonewcastle Project Space, Shoreditch 27th July - 14th August

by cfaruolo, July 27th, 2012 and has been Read 2508 times.
Last Edited by: Jack Stovin July 27th, 2012.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend to the Blur 21: The Exhibition pre-view at Londonewcastle Project Space on the ever so busy Redchurch Street in the heart of Shoreditch, on the verge of the release of the massive Blur box set commemorating the 21 years of existence of this emblematic britpop band.

The exhibit curated by leading expert on music photography Dave Brolan had of course an enormous (and chronological) set of images from iconic music photographers like Pennie Smith, Kevin Cummins, Tom Sheehan and Paul Postle among others covering from their first ever awkward photo shoots with baggy jeans and bowl cuts up until some exclusive backstage takes from their reunion gigs at Hyde Park in 2009.

For me the most interesting pieces were paintings and drawings from artists that accompanied Blur during their career, like the mighty Banksy cover art, the painting of the band's early days sitting on an old District Line train making west London proud or the many slides of the photos taken (and rejected) for the Best Of album artwork made by Julian Opie.

There were also some really cool rarities like sketches of the making of the covers of new singles 'Under The Westway' and 'The Puritan' where the letters of the title were carefully placed on top of the band's name following the designer's instructions showed on a wrinkled piece of paper, and the selection of the artwork of Parklife where the other options besides the running dogs were people doing sports.

Drummer Dave was spotted checking out the exhibition specially hanging out in the back room where there was a huge projection of some of the contents of the 21 box set right next to a frame with all the different typography's that could have potentially became Blur's logo.

Blur 21: The Exhibition is now open for the public until the 14th of August, and the entry is FREE! I recommend it, I'm pretty sure it will be the best after office you'll ever have, plus you'll get to take home a gorgeous Blur shaped stamp on your arm! (there was a guy that also took home one of the promotional posters that was blu-tack'ed to the wall, but we do not support robbery in this site, yet).