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CIA v UFO

Poster
1967 (made)
Artist/Maker
Osiris Agency Ltd. (made for)
Hspshash and the Coloured Coat (designers)
English, Michael (designers)
Weymouth, Nigel (designers)
Place of origin
London (made)

Poster for Pink Floyd, 'CIA v UFO', Art Deco style in blue, orange and yellow, with image of angel and a city on a rock.

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Object details

Categories
ELISE
Prints
Posters
Object type
Poster
TitleCIA v UFO (popular title)
Materials and techniques
Colour screen-print
Paper
Screen Printing
Brief description
Poster for Pink Floyd entitled 'CIA v UFO', designed by Hashash and the Coloured Coat (Michael English and Nigel Waymouth). Great Britain, 1967.
Physical description
Poster for Pink Floyd, 'CIA v UFO', Art Deco style in blue, orange and yellow, with image of angel and a city on a rock.
Dimensions
  • Height: 76cm
  • Width: 50.6cm
Dimensions taken from departmental notes
Marks and inscriptions
  • CIA UFO (Text of poster in bottom quarter.)
  • July 28 pink floyd (Text of poster within main image.)
  • PRINTED IN ENGLAND/OA114/[COPYRIGHT]1967 OSIRIS AGENCY LTD 90 WESTBOURNE TERRACE W2 (Printed along bottom left edge of poster.)
Gallery label
"Michael English (born 1942) and Nigel Waymouth (born 1941)
CIA v UFO. Poster promoting Pink Floyd on July 28
1967
Published by Osiris Visions Ltd.
Screenprint
E.1713-1991

Nigel Waymouth described how the lettering was visually exciting and they were interested in the idea of two very opposite forces, the repressive establishment versus the new counter culture. The flying island, or type of UFO, plays on the Buckminster Fuller idea that the Earth is just a space craft."

Text by Julia Bigham
Historical context
This poster advertises a performance of Pink Floyd, the psychedelic pop group, at the UFO club in Tottenham Court Road. UFO was a weekly club launched by the underground newspaper International Times in 1966 in an attempt to improve its finances and provide an all-night venue. Groups such as Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and later Authur Brown played regularly and the space swirled with psychedelic light shows and 'beautiful' people. Although UFO only existed for ten months Hapshash designed a number of psychedelic posters characterised by their innovatory use of Art Nouveau forms (here clearly derived from Mucha) and rainbow inking combined with metallic and fluorescent colours. Osiris continued to sell the posters for home decoration.

[Julia Bigham, 'British Design at Home', p.149]
Subjects depicted
Angels
Cities
Pink Floyd
Bibliographic reference
Christoph Grunberg, ed. Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era London: Tate, 2005. 239 p. : ill. (some col.) ISBN: 1854375954.
Other number
OA114
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
E.1713-1991

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Record createdFebruary 10, 2000
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O22952/cia-v-ufo-poster-english-michael/
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