Lovely.  An obsession of mine.  Spacesuit porn.

From here

Reminds me of a guy I met in Leicester (a cyclist) who was obsessed with helmets and hats and so on. It was in a house opposite the milk factory. His bedroom wall was covered in pictures of people in helmets.

At Paddington station. Does anyone notice this beautiful stuff?

Someone has installed and arranged this to be just like this. They wanted it to be tidy. If they wanted it to be unobtrusive, they’d have used white wire. Maybe.

Really

Hard to believe that these bodies are just the coverings for a racing machine. Designed for easy access to the machinery, for performance and stability.. Wind-tunnel honed, yes; designed and built in fibreglass, yes; formed around the machinery, yes… but form totally follows function.

And these are the results.

There is, to me, something utterly simplistic about them. Perhaps that is a nostalgic look – knowing what machinery such as this is like today, and what today’s technology allows and dictates.

I didn’t take these pictures.

Pop Life, Tate Modern. London October 2009.

Prostitution, ICA, London 1976.

One of the most influential beat combos in my life. TG.

Ironic that this should all turn up now. It’s amazing to me that the theme of this is that the commercialisation of self, and using oneself to create something ‘mainstream’ like porn, that’s then used in a gallery and that creates such a societal stir and that became so infamous can now be used, in a reverential way, by the same person to illustrate what the actual original intention was.

What I mean is, here is a major show centred around materialism and commercialism in art, using as an example (very well) such an infamous example of commercialism in art, and having the person at the centre of the original storm, Cosey, doing the latter-day representation of the event. Mind blowing.

Does that make sense?

Throbbing Gristle jamming at the ICA, London 1976. Prostitution.

Cosey Fanni Tutti section, Pop Life. Tate Modern, London October 2009.