Malicious Damage

Charged with 'malicious damage', Orton & Halliwell were famously sentenced to six months for borrowing, bastardising and bringing-back a selection of library books. Once evidence but now artefact, these pieces are purile; hilarious and disturbing by turns. Mixing surrealist collage with a healthy literary irreverence, they also seem to pre-empt a subversive humour that later pervades the decade.
 


I planned to include a selection in a group exhibition at Islington Museum in 2005. It turned out not to be such a huge cultural coup, Peter Blake had long since trumped us with About Collage at the Tate Liverpool in 2000. While, more devastatingly, low-level insurance/security saw that we eventually hung only high-res scans.



Luckily there's a far better opportunity to view these minor treasures along side the sculptural responses of artist, Adam Gillam, at east London's Ancient & Modern, 13 Jan - 26 Feb 2011.

Ancient & Modern, 201 Whitecross Street, London EC1Y 8QP
Wed-Sat, 12pm-6pm • +44 (0)20 7253 4550