Chancellor’s Building, Keele University 
Open 7am-7pm every day
Free parking available across campus after 5pm weekdays and all day on the weekend, in any space including those marked as 'approved permit holders only'.

9 November – 20 December 2023 

ArtsKeele & Keele University is proud to present a unique visual journey of the punk the last counter-cultural movement from its origins in Warhol's Factory and Downtown New York to its flowering in the Britain styled by the genius of Vivienne Westwood and led by the Clash, Sex Pistols and thousands of DIY bands that made music accessible to more teenagers than ever before.  

The launch will take place at Keele University on the 8th November (6pm-8.30pm) and will include a keynote featuring the original bass guitarist of the Sex Pistols, Glen Matlock.  Glen is credited as a songwriter on 10 of the 12 tracks on the Sex Pistols’ only album, Never Mind the Bollocks. 

The exhibition is curated by Stephen Colegrave the co-author of PUNK (Cassell 2001) and Inside Music (Random House 2004) and brings together a range of rock photographers including Leee Black Childers, Nat Finkelstein, Mick Rock and Bob Gruen as well as original screens from Vivienne Westwood's shop SEX. The exhibition will also feature work by the students from the School of Humanities at Keele University. 

The pictorial story starts in Downtown New York when an alternative society grew up as people lived off grid to avoid being called up for Vietnam. Poets, artists and musicians squatted in abandoned lofts and a world where pimps, pick pockets, rock stars, drag queens, artists all mixed together at Warhol's factory, Max's Kansas City and CBGBs created great bands like The Ramones, Blondie, New York Dolls and musicians like Patti Smith and Iggy Pop, but also where David Bowie, John Lennon, Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe hung out.

Leee Black Childers, one of the leading photographers in this exhibition was the bridge between Downtown New York and depressed and repressed 1970's Britain when he brought his band the Heartbreakers to join the Sex Pistols and the Clash on the infamous Anarchy tour in December 1975 and Anarchy in The UK was born. Leee was an important character because as the creative director of the Warhol play Pork several years later at the Roundhouse in Camden he had inspired David Bowie to create his Ziggy Stardust persona.  

This exhibition aims to recapture the spirit of punk and put it in to context. 

---