Design & content ©Simon Smalley 2024
In the summer of 2023 the Backlit Gallery invited me to participate in the Punk: Rage & Revolution exhibition which was coming to Nottingham later in the year following successful tenures in Leicester and Northampton. Within the chapters of That Boy Of Yours Wants Looking At I’d documented the positive, life-affirming effect that Punk had on the fifteen-year-old me as one of those Bored Teenagers which TV Smith of The Adverts sang about.
In the photograph above I’m at the opening night with Panya Banjoko, poet, writer, and founder of The Nottingham Black Archive. In September - on what was officially the hottest day of the year - Panya interviewed me at the gallery for an hour. Matthew Chesney, Backlit’s founder and director, filmed and subsequently edited it to a more manageable length which was interspersed with images of me and my fanzine covers. For the exhibition this was looped on a vintage television set with headphones attached for private audio enjoyment. Also displayed is an enlarged cover of my ‘Eat Me’ fanzine, for which I hand drew the lettering based on the logo on the debut album by The Clash. As there were no capital E or M it meant that I had to design my own. In homage to the fanzines I made when I was fifteen, the young arts collective ‘Pending’ created their own super-sized ‘zine.
Discussing the importance of sartorial individuality.
Talking about myself (such a hard task) to
Rosa Davies (Marketing Coordinator at Backlit Gallery)
Philippa Sharpe (Developments/Editions at Nottingham Contemporary)
Matthew Chesney (Founder and Director of Backlit Gallery).
Close-up of the vintage television on which the interview with me
played on a loop. A copy of my book rests on top.
Photographs: Joshua V Jones for Backlit Gallery
Backlit Gallery publicity on Instagram
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Let me introduce you to one of the contributors to our Punk exhibition: Simon Smalley.
Simon is a Nottingham gem. He was raised in St Ann’s with a deep passion for music and literature.
I bought his memoir – “That Boy Of Yours Wants Looking At” – a few days ago. He’s the kind of writer that makes any reader want to pick up a pen and get cracking.
In the 1970s, the punk scene was a haven for outsiders. It wasn’t exactly free from prejudice, but it was open to rebellion and individualism. It encouraged LGBT punks to be expressive in an otherwise oppressive culture.
Simon was one of these punks.
He channelled his energy into creating punk fanzines and his own punk-infused clothing.
His experiments in zines gave him a foundation that he would later rely on as a professional magazine writer.
The front covers of ‘Eat Me’ and ‘Sniper’,
two of the fanzines that I created in 1977