In 1969 the media began to feature our work at a time when we were uncertain about how we wished to go forward. I was more into Painting and Sculpture and not so interested in Printing. Things were beginning to happen with my Multiple Pieces and I was selling drawings at a reasonable price. Molly was designing some furnishing fabrics with Hull Traders and making original printed silks for Libertys and Mr. Fish. It was really the idea of the Printed Tattoos on translucent garments that brought Molly and I together with the work and which soon began to attract worldwide interest. This finally persuaded us to form a company working under the umbrella of a title. We needed something that you could apply to any level of work in any genre. Most of our waking hours were spent in our workshop in Chippenham House studios, Cambridge Road, Paddington, so Wonder Workshop seemed a fairly obvious choice. I made a drawing of the Wonder Workshop lettering and Molly's father, Albert White, who came from a long line of Fairground artists, made the wooden painted sign as a present in 1971. We registered
WONDER WORKSHOP
on
1st. May 1972 - registration no: 1660558.
Wild Thing T-shirt 1971
Pat and James sold our BREASTS T-shirts in their famous Chelsea Boutique called COUNTDOWN. We also sold the T-shirts in New York and a few shops in Europe but there were probably only about 40 produced at that time.
“John and Molly have created and developed a new concept in printed clothing which has made them the most successful and best respected in this field. All their original designs are produced in limited editions and sold to selected shops throughout the UK and abroad. They don't advertise or solicit publicity and they insist on supervising every individual garment themselves.”
from ‘BOY Blackmail’, John Krivine, Flash Publishing 1980.
We conceived our work as product/multiple from day one - the proving ground was a small network of music orientated shops mostly in the UK and the US. Since our initial involvement with 'Multiple Art' our basic philosophy remains the same... our main interest in life is innovation and making the print or object from beginning to end in our own workshops. Oscar Wilde said: "Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern, one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly" Poetic flam, but its true that fashion moves fast, your head is in the future, we talk about being on the verge of a global culture where ‘everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes’.
Exciting times these, when the universal input becomes so great, there are no single answers. The concept of mainstream doesn't work when the floodgates of all levels of art and music are open. Individual expression is the key - breaking the ‘rules of attraction’ and the taboos of sexual identity - crossing the lines of race and creed.
40 years before Punk, the anarchic ideas of Dadaism revolutionised the entire spectrum of the established arts. Although it struggled through the mayhem of the second world war with artists such as John Heartfield, Paul Citroen and George Grosz, it fired up the Pop Art movement of the 50's which celebrated and challenged a product driven society.
- is a work of art
- is a replica
- three is a product?
The Art establishment definition of ‘what is Art?’ Has been slowly eroded over the last 30 years with the emergence of Screen Print Studios, Multiple Art and more recently, digital Printing. Things are beginning to run in reverse - the product becomes the Art Form.
TIMES UP!
