In 1968 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 drawings were selling at a reasonable price. Molly's furnishing fabrics were being launched by Hull Traders and her original printed silks sold at Libertys and Mr. Fish. In 1968, we worked together on a series of Fashion DIY pieces that were designed as a parody on the American baseball Jacket - a piece of fabric printed with all the sections ready to cut and sew together. But 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 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. Molly's father, Albert White, who came from a long line of Fairground artists, made the wooden painted sign as a present in 1971.
WONDER WORKSHOP
1st. May 1972 - registration no: 1660558.
"Lips" T-shirt 1973
"Wonder Workshop T-Shirts distilled the flambouyance of the early 70's. Artists John Dove and Molly White started the label in 1971. Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Marc Bolan and Paul McCartney were photographed in state of the art shirts like "Pin-up Girls" and "My Baby Loves The Western Movies". Their hand-printed designs had a major influence on T-Shirt graphics. Sophisticated prints were realised through a pioneering use of photographic screens and photo-montage techniques that produced "Lips" and "Leopardskin Girls" in 1973 while the "Exploding Mickey" T combined skilled draughtsmanship with explosive colours to evoke the American Dream gone berserk."
from 'The T-Shirt Book' by Alice Hiller and John Gordon, Ebury Press, London 1988.
We conceived our work as 'product' or 'multiple' from day one - the proving ground was a small network of music orientated shops mostly in the UK and the US. 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. Since our initial involvement with 'Multiple Art' our basic philosophy remains the same ...
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. We talk about being on the verge of a global culture where 'everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes'. The cultural melting pot is scalding hot!
40 years before 'Punk', the anarchic ideas of Dadaism and Situationism revolutionised the entire spectrum of the established arts to struggle through the mayhem of the second world war with artists such as John Heartfield, Paul Citroen, George Grosz and fired up the Pop Art movement of the 50's that celebrated and challenged a product driven society. The more radical ideas of Situationism seeped through European Art with the sketchbooks and graphics of Asger Jorn, to be resurrected in Street Art and Street Fashion at the close
of the 20th.Century as the global economy began to crash.
- is a work of art
- is a replica
- is a product?
So the art establishment's definition of 'what is Art?' Has been slowly eroded over the last 50 years with the emergence of Screen Print Studios, Graffiti Art, Multiple Art and more recently, digital Printing. Things are beginning to run in reverse where The image is part of the living environment and the product becomes the Art Form -
TIMES UP!
