Sorcha Dallas

Punk is arguably the most intensely scrutinised capsule of pop culture, and one that has been commercially exploited to the extent that it now exists as a sorry, shagged-over shadow of the DIY ethos that once drove it. The story of what happened next, post-punk – an era hazily associated in Britain with the decadent costumery and body politics of club king Leigh Bowery and the gritty Manchester underground of New Order – has been drawing new interest for a while now. A Joy Division biopic is soon to be upon us, while Simon Reynold’s excellent book Rip It Up and Start Again (2005) has done much to newly amplify the sounds of the period. This month The Secret Public, an exhibition rolling into London’s ICA by way of the Kunstverein Munich, aims at defining and refining a discourse around the further flowering of creativity that bloomed in punk’s wake. While a restrictive mainstream blanket of reactionary American culture dominated the 1980s, Thatcherism, AIDS, the Falklands War, nuclear arms and the last gasps of the Cold War were all part of a troubling landscape. The exhibition presents those working across art, music, fashion and film who rumbled a darker response to the times. The extensive list of artists includes Linder, Bodymap, Cerith Wyn Evans, Victor Burgin, Gilbert and George, Isaac Julien, Richard Hamilton, John Maybury, Trojan and Wolfgang Tillmans. The list goes on, and the intelligent and insightful selection by curators Stefan Kalmar, Michael Bracewell and Ian White suggests that this will be a show that offers fresh revelations.