Jamie Reid

Jamie Reid (1947-2023) was a British artist, designer and activist. Reid is known worldwide for his design of the iconic record sleeve Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977), which bound him inextricably to punk. Punk stood for protest and the call to dismantle a conservative, commercially driven society, alongside this, his mystical work was a proposal for freedom and natural harmony.

In all of this, Jamie Reid never saw himself as a solitary artist but worked with others on art in service of a social purpose. He protested in word and image against the policies of Margaret Thatcher’s cold-blooded politics, the war in Iraq, the arrest of Pussy Riot and the rise of Putin. In the exhibition, his activist work is shown alongside his esoteric work: from activist zines and anarchist collages of the seventies, to films, spatial installations and mystical paintings from the years that followed.

Cover image: Jamie Reid, Untitled, 2012 | Jamie Reid Archive / John Marchant Gallery, Brighton