This week Enter Gallery is going underground with a new exclusive piece from Tape Deck Art, inspired by the hit records of iconic Mods - The Jam.
Launched to coincide with Brighton exhibition, This is the Modern World – the largest exhibition of The Jam and The Style Council Memorabilia to ever take place – Boy About Town features a collection of authentic Jam badge designs from the late 70s and early 80s.
In today’s blog, we reveal more about this exclusive release, and chat to Tape Deck about what inspired the piece…
Boy About Town is available now, exclusively at Enter Gallery. Get yours here.
Boy About Town
Tape Deck Art AKA Tony Dennis is a self-taught British artist who paints and creates giant 3D pin badges.
As an avid music lover and collector of vintage punk badges, when Dennis felt the call to create art that was both eye-catching and tactile, it was only natural that he turn to recreating the badges that he held dear.
Featuring designs taken from actual pins from the 70s and 80s, each badge he recreates is hand-painted, printed onto vinyl and wrapped onto a hand-spun aluminium badge, before being hand-finished with a powder coating and epoxy resin. Next, he shines it up, to give the piece an authentic pin-badge feel.
That’s Entertainment
There are few bands as distinctly British as The Jam. The music, the fashion, the haircuts… from the moment a 19-year old Paul Weller put on a slim fit suit, and released In the City (1977), The Jam have provided the soundtrack to Mod subculture.
Hailing from Woking, and born during the punk explosion that brought us The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Buzzcocks, it wasn’t long before they caught the eye of Tape Deck. He recalls:
“My first recollection of The Jam was on Top of The Pops in early 1982 performing, A Town Called Malice. I was nine years old at that time and the energy that projected from the television into my parents living room was intense. Probably one of the finest three minute pop songs of all time. From that day on, my passion for music was unearthed.”
Boy About Town, which takes its title from The Jam song of the same name, features eight hand-painted recreations of vintage Jam badges from the seventies and eighties. Tape Deck explains:
“I love to paint in my words 'nostalgic pop art' and you really can't get more nostalgic when you're of a certain vintage than a The Jam pin badge”.
“A fashion accessory that was worn by hundreds of thousands of all genders and ages from back in the day, each badge has been scaled up into oversized badges so you can now relive these memories each and every day.”
This is the Modern World Exhibition
Any self-respecting music fan won’t want to miss the This is the Modern World Exhibition kicking off in Brighton on July 30th.
Curated by Nicky Weller (Paul’s Sister), the exhibition features the biggest collection of The Jam memorabilia ever brought together in one place. Each room will include items, sourced from the personal archives of the band members, their families and fans, depicting key moments and memorabilia from each year of the band’s career.
Expect to peruse original stage outfits, hand-written lyrics, personal photographs, rare footage, unreleased music videos, scrapbooks, letters, postcards, fanzines, instruments – including Weller’s iconic Whaam! Guitar – and of course, customised Jam scooters.
Nicky Weller comments, "If you're a Jam fan there's every single thing you can possibly imagine, if you're not a fan it's still interesting as far as social history goes. If you're just a music fan it's just a noisy fun exhibition".
The exhibition rides into Brighton on 30th July, and runs until August 29th 2022.
Boy About Town by Tape Deck Art is available exclusively at Enter Gallery now. Get yours here.
