Politics, Protest, & Punk: The Legacy of Jamie Reid

Turf Projects has worked with Croydon School of Creative Art since 2015, offering a paid residency opportunity for a graduating or former student. For 2024’s residency, as part of our exhibition ‘Eye Level’, we selected Grey de Montmorency to create work in response to the Jamie Reid Archives, housed at John Marchant Gallery in Brighton. 

I am a photographic student with a strong interest in documenting social protest check and the alternative music scene.

At the initial stage of this project, I had the privilege of visiting the Jamie Reid Archives in Brighton. This is an extensive archive curated by John Marchant. This visit allowed me to explore Jamie’s archived work, and gave me time to talk with John getting to understand Jamie’s life. I build up my understanding and knowledge of what kind of a person he was, and how he incorporated his political and social values into his art work. I enjoyed observing the progression of Jamie’s artwork throughout his life, he was an incredibly multitalented artist with so many unique and equally important pieces of artwork in his collection. I especially liked his early work with Surburban Press, a series of zines he produced after attending Croydon College about the socioeconomic problems in Croydon. His reflections are interesting in comparison to the problems faced by present day Croydon, which haven’t changed much.

Jamie Reid’s work helped form a community where people who care for social justice passionately, and also follow alternative genres of music, to connect. The political points he made in his artwork has supported and enabled an alternative culture that is a safe space for anyone, as we all have these core socialistic beliefs that Jamie Reid played a big part in intertwining strong political beliefs into the punk scene. In the ’70s Jamie began to become involved in protests. This was a time of social unrest and the emergence of a counterculture, with anarchist roots in the emerging punk scene. The UK punk scene was anti-establishment and rocked mainstream society to the core. Jamie was instrumental in this scene by his artwork gracing album covers and posters such as for the Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, and Afro Celt Sound System.

Jamie Reid expressed in his work that ‘it’s not all about the music’, meaning the punk scene’s political standpoint is as much, if not more important, than the music itself.