This inaugural piece was first created at Peacock, paving the way for Reid’s future work with the band that would define a generation. Fittingly, a new edition has been made in Aberdeen at Peacock & the Worm via their Open Access Model to be launched alongside an exhibition of selected Reid works. The gallery and printmaking studio celebrated their 50th year in 2024 and in an interview before his death, Reid spoke of creating the original Pistols artwork there in his earlier years.
Reid was a rebel, an anarchist, a druid and provocateur. As well, he was a lover of nature whose motivations were deeply rooted in generosity and ethical considerations. The exhibition explores the artist’s broader practice and vision, uncovering a narrative into decades of political and esoteric work, while introducing unexpected connections to places less well known in the historical canon of radical politics.
With Scottish Heritage on his father’s side, Jamie Reid spent time on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides after leaving college, learning the traditional art of crofting and working for left-wing weekly newspaper West Highland Free Press. It was at this time that he heard from Malcolm McLaren, who he’d studied alongside at Croydon School of Art. McLaren had collaborated with Reid before after and was familiar with Reid’s more political work, particularly the Suburban Press. He was working with a new band called the Sex Pistols and asked if Reid would be interested in doing the artwork.
Reid decided to accept McLaren’s offer to come in to produce work that would become key to punk’s definitive identity. It should be noted that both Reid and his then partner Sophie Richmond (who was soon running the Pistols management office Glitterbest) stated that they only got involved with the band as they saw the political potential in the situation and that Reid’s work was in itself, the production of a trained artist who saw the campaigns he worked on as part of his wider art practice.
It was in the threads of connection with original members of the Aberdeen People’s Press (1973-1984), who published an alternative newspaper as well as books and pamphlets, that Peacock first discovered that early prints of the first ever Sex Pistols artwork had been made there some five decades earlier. As well as their own publications, Aberdeen People’s Press had provided a printing service for a wide range of radical groups, community newspapers, trade unions and campaigning organisations. Jamie Reid spoke of his Aberdeen connections in a 2023 interview and of making Sex Pistols prints at the Peacock in the 1970s. Now, after 50 years, the start of a collaboration which was to drastically reset the aesthetic landscape of 20th century pop culture can be experienced once more, at a space significant to the artist.
