In 1968, when Freddie Mercury was studying Graphics and Illustration at Ealing Art College, First Year Graphics Students produced this one-off magazine of artwork, poems, articles and anecdotes.
“this magazine is the work of Ealing First Year Graphics Students, but in a way it is anti-Graphic Design. Our only aims in producing it are to entertain and delight you, and perhaps even to inform and impress you.”
~Jill Marston, editor
In the early 1960s the School of Art was composed of Fashion, Graphics, Industrial Design, Photography and Fine Art Departments. With courses considered revolutionary during the mid 1960s, Ealing Art College (or Ealing Technical College & School of Art) existed on the site of UWL’s Ealing Campus on St Mary’s Road until the 1970s. The two-year Ground course was a radical and influential experiment in art education led by Roy Ascott, whose work was based on cybernetics and telematics.
Ascott taught alongside a team of artists including R.B. Kitaj and Anthony Benjamin. Pete Townsend’s inspiration for the destruction of guitars and amplifiers is said to have come from Gustav Metzger’s auto-destructive art lectures. Subsequent students of the College included Ronnie Wood, Alan Lee and Freddie Mercury.
Donated by former student Tim Dean who attended the School of Art between 1967 and 1969, the magazine is now in the hands of UWL Archive. If you’d like to look at the work in more detail, why not make an appointment to visit?
Hi Anne-Marie
I’d definitely like to arrange a visit to see the Ealing Tech Art archive…when it’s possible to do so, hopefully in the not too far distant future!
I was a law student at ETC from ’72 to ’75, but was heavily involved with the Students’ Union and its ‘Social Committee’ – ie band and events, and DJ’ing gigs up to late ’76. Whilst doing this I collected a small number of gig/events posters which were produced for us by the Art School. These were silk-screened in small (sometimes very small) quantities with a fair loss rate due to poor registration etc, and the Students’ Union paid costs of materials used. Attrition rate of these posters was inevitably high (stolen, damaged..) but I saved a few, they are really quite unique. I’ve never been able to identify the artists, we often never saw them…the posters tended to ‘arrive’ at various times.
Periodic web searches have yielded nothing but I’ve just come across your archive blog.
Hopefully when we regain freedom of movement we can arrange a meeting, and I can show you some of the posters too…
Best regards
Jon Temple
Dear Jon, Thank you very much for your interesting comment. I would love to see the posters you mention. Keep an eye on our website https://www.uwl.ac.uk/library/library-services/university-west-london-archive for information on when we can reopen and contact library@uwl.ac.uk to arrange an appointment. Best wishes, Anne-Marie Purcell – UWL Archivist
Hi Jon, Thanks for your comment. That’s great that you would like to visit to view the Ealing College of Art archive. We do not yet have a confirmed date for when we will reopen for appointments from external researchers. If you would like to email library@uwl.ac.uk with your research interest and contact details I’ll get back to you about our relevant collections. Thanks, Anne-Marie Purcell, Archivist.
do you have othere reference ? what would you like to share again?
Hi Telkom University, I’m not sure what the questions is. If you have a query, please email library@uwl.ac.uk and we’ll get back to you. Thanks, Anne-Marie
well post
Thank you for your comment. If you would like further information on collections available at UWL please email library@uwl.ac.uk.