The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
NIGHT FEVER: RECLAIM THE NGHT
into and hear the four genres of music that are represented in the show (disco, pre-disco, techno and house).”
The earliest days of nightclub history as we might be most familiar with them are represented next, first of all with the disco spaces which popularised the genre in New York. “With the rise of Studio 54 in New York came celebrity culture,” says Hassard. “This was the idea that nightclubs are places to be seen, and it looks at some of the people photographed in these places, like Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and so on.
“Then another experimental nightclub in New York was Area, it’s super-interesting. It was around in the early ‘80s, it was famous for changing its interior every six weeks or so. The whole nightclub would be stripped out and they would just completely change it to another theme. We’ve got a slideshow of different nights at that club, and the settings for it are just incredible, they’re so creative.
“(The visual artist) Keith Haring is a massive name who was involved in nightclubs in New York in the ‘80s, he designed the invites for many of them and his artwork was on display in Area and Palladium, in particular. Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well. If you look at New York in that period and the people who attended those clubs, like Warhol and so on, major names in our history were involved – not just to attend them, but actually involved in their design.”
While the first two decades of contemporary nightclub design history shown here are very much focused on continental Europe and North America, the UK comes into its own at the end of the 1980s with Manchester’s Hacienda, owned by the group New Order and indie impresario Tony Wilson. It made a strong feature of its designed elements, the creations of Ben Kelly and record sleeve artist Peter Savile, which included roadwork-style bollards and high-vis yellow flashes.
For the final section which has been imported from Vitra, the current fashion for Euro-clubs which has persisted since 2000 is the focus, and in particular destination superclub spaces in Berlin like Berghain and Tresor.
“This part also looks at the idea of nightclubs as being transient spaces,” says Hassard. “That’s become even more apparent recently, with soundsystems and DJs that can move around, and nightclubs which don’t have to be in one specific place.”
There is also a look at the personal side of attending nightclubs, and also the links they have with social and political trends. This contains films, including the artist Jeremy Deller’s Everybody in the Place, which is a history of British rave culture of the 1990s and its connections to the politics in the country at the time.
A specially-commissioned film by Glasgowbased filmmaker, Tim Knights, looks at amateur footage filmed in Scottish clubs throughout the 1990s and 2000s. “You get this idea of the pure joy of a night out, and
the shared experience,” says Hassard. “It’s so nostalgic just watching it from what feels like a lifetime ago, when in early 2021 nightclubs have been closed for more than a year.”
The exhibition also includes a 20-metrelong installation by the British artist Vinca Peterson, which is a selection of her photographs, ephemera, leaflets and diary entries from the late ‘90s. Named A Life of Subversive Joy, it’s a record of her life at the time, as she toured Europe with rave soundsystems.
Finally, a section on Scottish clubs created with cultural historian Mhairi Mackenzie features Glasgow’s Sub Club and one of its key – and most individually-designed – nights Optimo Espacio; Club 69 in Paisley; Fever in Aberdeen; and the Rumba Club in Perth, as well as photography of the Sub Club by Brian Sweeney and Locarno at Dundee’s Reading Rooms by Ben Douglas. This all demonstrates how the contemporary clubs of Scotland looked outside the UK for their design influence, towards Detroit, Chicago and Barcelona.
“The Sub Club only never goes out of fashion because the design’s good,” says Mike Grieve, director of the famous Glasgow club and promoter of the acclaimed Fever in Aberdeen in the early ‘90s.
“It’s been refreshed and updated over the years, and the interior design is absolutely critical to the success of the new Sub Club, I worked long hours with the design team (the Subbie uses the agencies ISO and Graven Images) to get that right.
“The current design background is known
as Dazzle Ship, it’s taken from a British Naval design which was used to combat the U-boats – hence the Sub Club connection. A great deal of thought goes into it. There’s always a narrative. The cultural impact of clubs in general is often overlooked,” he continues. “With the Sub Club and Fever, there’s a sense of an alumnus of people from all walks of life who still relate to their youth, misspent or otherwise, in these kind of venues.
“Clubs are a melting point for creative ideas, they’re at the cutting edge in terms of music and design, and that’s been the case since at least the mid-‘80s onwards..”
He’s also conscious that the history of clubs’ impact, in Scotland at least, isn’t confined to the biggest names in the biggest cities; that the contributions of, say, the Rhumba Club, Fever, and Fat Sam’s and the Reading Rooms in Dundee are also recognised.
“I think perhaps people don’t really consider nightclubs as being designed spaces,” says Kirsty Hassard. “I wonder if it’s because you only ever see them when they’re dark?
“That’s the point, obviously. They’re meant to be spaces where you can lose yourself, to be places of escapism, but I wonder if people have made the connection that nightclubs have been so tied to major parts of social history, or that they’re so much a part of people’s development and social lives? You know, my parents met in a nightclub… it’s all intrinsically tied together.”
WITH THE RISE OF STUDIO 54 IN NEW YORK CAME CELEBRITY CULTURE AND THE IDEA THAT NIGHTCLUBS ARE PLACES TO BE SEEN
Night Fever: Designing Club Culture opens at the V&A Dundee on Saturday May 1.
See www.vam.ac.uk/dundee.