Unordinary People
Awesome, cool looking kids at the Royal Albert Hall
Before the trials and tribulations of existence grind down the will to express yourself as flamboyantly as possible, you have something called youth. Ted Rolhemus has taken it on himself to curate “a celebration of today's multicultural, multi-class and multi-ageist British Youth”, under the banner of Unordinary People at Royal Albert Hall. It’s a grand collection of known and lesser known images capturing twentieth century kids’ ability to be young and look awesome.
Wandering around the outer corridors of The Royal Albert Hall at the moment is like wandering around a huge and detailed Darwinian evolutionary diagram taking you from our base monkey ancestors to our upright current selves, except it’s the fresh styles that morph over time rather than the distance between the floor and knuckles.
From the Mods to the Teddy Boys, through cavorting naked hippies of the sixties and the punks of the eighties to a photo taken from this year's G20, the exhibition is a series of images that captures the essence and changing styles of a half-century's youth culture. All underlined by a timeline of noteworthy cultural events. The introduction of the birth control pill sits by the nudists; Maggie's election makes way for the rise of punk. Hemlines rise and fall, hairstyles turn from crafted perfection to dreadlocked masses. If you want to know what your parents were up to when they were living it large it’s a fair bet that if you take the year of their birth, add a decent teen number and wander around the exhibition a bit you’ll find what you are looking for. If that’s your thing.
The style of the exhibition adds a hell of a lot to the experience. Following the images and essays around the Royal Hall's corridor walls takes you full circle, mirroring the cyclical nature of the fashions of an era. The current new ravers have a lot to thank the happy housers of the eighties for, the hippies of the nineties aren't the same animals as the peace and love, butt-naked types of the seventies, but it is clear to see that they shop at the same venues.
The photos’ subjects are as varied as their subjects’ fashions, iconic shots such as Bez with Wide Eyes, and Mick Jones and Paul Simmons, leering at a camera backstage, sit next to photos of people you'll never have hear of. But they all show the same thing: kids, generally having the time of their lives and doing what they do best - looking hot. The essays that accompany the eras give a decent base of understanding for the why and the what of where the various looks came from. The timeline hints at the dark forces of global events affecting youthful conceptions of beauty. It’s all very enthralling. The Royal Albert Hall is a bitch to get to but it’s worth the trip.
The show runs until 23 May at Royal Albert Hall, all should go tip their hat to the vagaries of youth that it presents.
