Jamie Reid the iconic creator of the graphic sensibility for the 70’s Punk band, the Sex Pistols has created a poster protesting the internment of the Russian Punk band, Pussy Riot. The three piece female band were arrested for staging an Anti-Putin protest inside an historic Russian Orthodox church in Moscow, while a service was going on. They are accused of dancing in coloured balaclavas in front of the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour ,while asking the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Vladimir Putin.
Their arrest for hooliganism, has created so much controversy that it will be unlikely that they will ever receive a fair trial. It is a case that has divided Russia between those who think the band have been treated far too harshly, and those who feel their action has seriously offended the Orthodox faith.
Some people are predicting a three to seven year sentence. The trial will begin on Monday, having already spent the past five months in prison, for the crime of trying to sing a political protest song in the cathedral.
Jamie Reid’s body of work sits firmly within a tradition of English radical dissent that would include, for example, William Blake, Wat Tyler and Gerrard Winstanley. Like them, the work of dissent must offer, out of necessity, other social and spiritual models and Reid’s practice is no exception.
Although Reid is known primarily for the deployment of Situationist strategies in his iconic work for the Sex Pistols (God save The Queen, Never Mind The Bollocks) and Suburban Press, the manifold strands of his art both continue that work whilst showing us other ways in which we can mobilise our energy and spirituality. It is this dialectic between gnosticism and dissent that lies at the heart of Reid’s practice and makes him one of the great English iconoclastic artists.
Jamie Reid’s unique vision articulates and gives form to some of the key issues of our times. He responds to the ever-increasing attacks on our civil liberties and shared common spaces with passionate anger and savage humour, and shows us ways in which we might re-organise our political and spiritual resources. This is the role of the shaman and Reid’s art acts like a lightning rod, returning us to the earth so that we might share the work of healing. This is perhaps the most important poster that Reid has created in thirty five years.