22Jul
Graham Stevens, his pneumatics, his Foam Happening at the Bob Dylan Festival, and his Cool
I had been aware of - I had seen Graham Stevens - in London - in the early Seventies. He seemed to be everywhere - everywhere where cool people were -anyway. He was at the gigs I went to (Elvis Costello seemed to be there a lot too), the art exhibitions, the cafes, the restaurants, in the streets in Notting Hill, South Ken, Brixton, Covent Garden, at the Round House, Portobello market and Campden Market. You know why I noticed him? Because he looked extremely cool - medium length shaggy hair, cool clothes etc - AND because he had a beautiful coloured girlfriend (not so usual in those days - whose name I can’t remember - I met her much later, in the 1990s - still with Graham - still beautiful). It was only later in the 1970s I guess, that I discovered Why he was so famous - he was one of the earliest of the then new wave of Pneumatic artist-engineers.
And Ray and Bill Foulk had had him create a Foam Happening and other inflatables at the IOW Festival in 1969 (see Paris Match cover below).
He had worked famously with the inspirational architect Cedric Price on Mick Farren’s Phun City - Farren’s ‘more than just a Pop festival’ festival in 1970. I finally met and got to know Graham in the early 2000s, through the adventurous photographer Andrew Tweedy, who was a buddy of Graham’s - and had photographed most of his work. I was a trustee at Dimbola at that time - and we saw Andrew Tweedy setting up a fifty-foot telescopic pole in Terrace Lane in front of the museum/gallery - it was a monopod - and a long one - with a camera-mount at the top end - and Tweedy was taking some amazing semi- ‘aerial’ photographs. It was surprising, in those days before drones, what a different POV the 50-foot monopod offered. It might sound silly now that we were so impressed, but then this was NEW. So we got to know and like Tweedie - he was promoting the idea of a version of the TV show about business investment Angels (The Dragon’s Den) but for Social Entrepreneurs - a brilliant idea I thought - and still do - but what was he to call it?
Graham Stevens; Pneumatic Foam Happening at the IOW Festival in 1969
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6ChOjwlTo&t=17s
Graham Stevens: Desert Cloud 1974 (courtesy Pompidou Centre)This was one of the most remarkable (and there were many) of Graham Steven’s pneumatics - a self-inflating and rain-bearing - pseudo-cloud - he called it Desert Cloud - which used different plastics (both black and transparent) to create condensation on its underside - which precipitated as rain…
So Graham Stevens is another of our West Wight Cultural Heroes, perhaps to be matched with the marine entrepreneur and ‘Adventure Kids’ leader Mark Board from West Cowes - who made SeaFlex - a successful business - from his inflatables - marine bouys, rafts, oil-slick-barriers, wreck-rescue bags etc..
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