PUNK

The Michael Hoppen Gallery is delighted to present PUNK, an exhibition of vintage press prints that document the rise of punk culture in 1970s Britain. Many of the prints included are suitably distressed, with an object quality and intensity that encapsulates the movement.

The gallery was established twenty-four years ago on the Kings Road in Chelsea, an area that just over a decade earlier formed the epicentre of punk culture. In 1971 Malcolm McLaren and Vivien Westwood opened SEX (originally called Let it Rock), a notorious shop that became instrumental in creating the radical punk clothing style. McLaren also began managing The Swankers, who would shortly become the Sex Pistols. 

By the end of 1976, Punk was in full swing, many Sex Pistols fans had formed their own bands and the King’s Road was famous for the crowds of punks who paraded up and down it each weekend. The shops, the performance, the characters and the spectacle that was PUNK are all captured in this extraordinary collection of vintage photographs.