CRASS
a really grey time. Everyone wore grey, the houses were grey; the only colour that I remember was in little clusters on street corners, where the newsagents had the ads for Wills cigarettes, Senior Service, or Tizer. That’s what lead me to design, being desperate for some colour and seeing it only in commercial applications. The swinging sixties were really an economic phenomenon – when we were kids, our playgrounds were literally bombsites.Those bombsites stayed until the early sixties. “At the same time there was this media explosion, where the visuals were being joined with music, and programmes on television like Ready Steady Go! had really interesting graphics. There was a lot of crosspollination between the arts – it was hard to say where it came from but suddenly everyone was waking up to think things could be done a little bit differently . . . things could be brighter, more vibrant, louder, more diverse. . .” Despite the times, and the involvement of art schools in the story, this is not leading up to some great rock family tree around the Essex Art School scene; not unless you count a delicate and unexpected webthread to Kilburn & The High Roads – quite feasibly the UK band with the most legitimate claim to influencing the birth of British punk via their influence on a certain Johnny Rotten. Kilburns vocalist and future star in his own right fronting The Blockheads, Ian Dury was at South West Essex College while Gee was at South-East. Gee Vaucher:“He was doing painting. One of his best friends – Terry Day – is a jazz drummer (and was drummer of the Kilburns); he was a very good friend of mine. I never saw Ian play.” So, not an alliance as such, but nevertheless interesting that the earthy end of pre-punk (that we are told didn’t trust hippies as a matter of principle) and the more traditional alternative culture, could smell each others’ breath. Rock music aside – and it was well aside in this case – Gee started thriving at art school, like any hungry working class genius might. Blown away by all the new possibilities opening up to her, she began devouring inspiration and influence like a hungry child:“I progressed in the first two years of art school like a meteor.Two years at art school just doing art 24 hours a day, it was like . . . whoosh!” It would be a mistake, however, to presume that Gee’s art was as overtly political as her thoughts. At this stage in her life, nothing could
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