David Bowie's famous K. West sign on display in major exhibition

David Bowie - Sound and Vision

40 years ago this year saw the release of an album and the meteoric rise of a performer who was to overturn the landscape of pop culture more than any artist since the Beatles.
David Bowie and ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ landed like a bolt of lightning on the increasingly grim landscape of 70s Britain. The music’s stripped down trash aesthetic, fired by Mick Ronson’s screaming guitar, was one of Punk’s most influential seeds, but it was Bowie himself, a startling vision of near-alien glamour and sexual ambiguity, who electrified a generation of teenagers who would go on to change pop music and culture forever. The number of influential artists over subsequent decades who have name checked Bowie and this seminal album as the spur for their own creative inspiration is truly remarkable.

Ziggy Stardust – A lost icon unveiled

As the centerpiece of the exhibition, the gallery is proud to unveil publically for the first time in 30 years the original Heddon Street K. West sign from the album’s front cover - probably the single most iconic cover location in British rock history, along with the Abbey Road zebra crossing.”
Rescued by a music industry veteran and finally restored, this is the original sign face seen on the album cover’s famous Brian Ward photograph, with Bowie standing underneath, a pose recreated in the original location by countless fans.

A New Career in a New Town

From Ziggy up to the beginning of the 80s, Bowie embarked on an unprecedented, at times dangerous, rollercoaster of creative renewal and reinvention. From London, to Los Angeles and Berlin, each musical sidestep was accompanied by an equally startling visual transformation, a personification of the musical and cultural ideas firing Bowie’s restless creative changes.
This hugely influential visual and stylistic presentation carried over to his record sleeves and posters.  As with his astute selection of musical collaborators, Bowie had a knack of working with highly talented design collaborators; the exhibition highlights the world famous images Brian Duffy, Edward Bell, Masayoshi Sukita, Guy Peellaert, Steve Shapiro, Eric Stephen Jacobs and others created for Bowie.

In common with a surprising number of major artists from the 70s, original posters and promo material on Bowie are hard to come by, and the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to purchase classic vintage posters, and more, from his greatest period. To view all of the posters available to buy at the exhibition visit: www.rock-explosion.com/bowie1.html