Dennis Morris
'Punk is a state of mind' -  These three limited edition screenprints are by legendary photographer Dennis Morris. In 1977 Johnny Rotten asked Morris to be the Sex Pistols' official photographer. For the year of the album Anarchy in the UK he trailed the Pistols at the peak of their notoriety, documenting the trail of chaos and destruction they left in their wake. If Johnny Rotten was the sneeringly, abrasively articulate face of the Pistols, the terrifyingly nihilistic Sid Vicious was the band's enduring media icon, an image surviving even Sid's own suicide by overdose in 1979. In SiD Morris presents Vicious both at the apogee of fame and on the brink of what was to be a dark journey, daring us to enter his world with a conspiratorial wink. In his first exploration of the screen-printing process, Morris deliberately evokes Warhol’s iconic screenprints of the 1970s, using three lurid punk colours and making the image grainy to reflect this moment in time. The chain at Sid’s neck is printed in spot silver ink and both chain and left eye are varnished. Sid's Cowboy T-shirt by Vivienne Westwood was one of her most iconic designs. Each edition is appropriately of 77.
Technique
Screenprint: 15 colours, silver ink & spot varnish printed on 310gsm Somerset satin paper. Published by Manifold Editions 2013.