Creative Salvage, 1981-1991

If we look at the evolution of design history in the last 50 years, we can identify several key movements—minimalism, Space-Age, Postmodernism, Pop—but none was as exciting, as full of surprises, and as anti-establishment, as the British design movement of the 80s. It was long before the market for contemporary design was born, and before platforms to showcase avant-garde design were established. During this decade—which would bring us the yuppie, and the launch of the Sony Walkman—a small group of entrepreneurial anarchists created an entirely new type of furniture that looked like nothing that had ever been done before. While the group at this time was on the periphery, its lasting influence is seen in contemporary design to this day. This movement is the subject of a new exhibition, Accidents Will Happen: Creative Salvage, 1981–1991, curated by Gareth Williams at Friedman Benda. This small but spectacular exhibition illuminating the heretofore untold story of this historical moment when everything changed.

This movement was the outcome of the political and cultural landscape of its time. Margaret Thatcher won in a landslide, and mass unemployment incited protests against her Conservative government. The triumph of Punk, not just as an aggressive form of rock music, but also as a style and mode that rejected mainstream culture, was, at its core, as well as the do-it-yourself movement.

This type of historical exhibition demonstrates the new role of the design gallery to educate the public in design culture, to resurrect the forgotten, to support scholarship, and to reveal inspiration in constructing taste. It consists of some iconic pieces by the heroes of the Movement—Ron Arad, André Dubreuil, Mark Brazier-Jones, Tom Dixon, André Dubreuil, Danny Lane, Jon Mills and Deborah Thomas – all designers and makers who created personal pieces filled with narrative, each one a full representation of the designer’s individual aesthetic. Yet, the exhibition presents a clear, stylistic narrative and language which turned this into a ‘movement.’ The pieces on display are all provocative and disruptive, and challenge traditional definitions of good taste. Just like its contemporary, Punk, which came to confront traditions in British society, the furniture is sensuous and trashy at the same time, all crafted by hand in low and scrap materials: found objects, reclaimed marble, bicycle tubes, fragments of glass, concrete, rough steel, metal wires, cool and stylish objects, which under the hands of their makers became startle objects, which are beyond the everyday, because they rejected the decade’s culture of consumerism.  

They were not all British, but they came to London and participated in this radical movement that changed the history of furniture. They were to the furniture design what Jean Paul Gaultier and Claude Montana were to fashion of that time: introducing a sense of aggression, filled with contradictions and complexity. Their movement was not unlike contemporary architects who dabbled in Deconstructivism, giving the impression of fragmentation and absence of symmetry and continuity, often impractical, but always unconventional and intriguing. They created with furniture what their peers created in New Wave Music. But it is hard to believe that the 80s are history.