The Album Cover Art of Storm Thorgerson

Who: Storm Thorgerson, co-founder of 70s British graphic art group Hipgnosis, has been designing album covers for over 35-years and is responsible for some of music’s most iconic artwork. With no formal training in art or graphic design, his career got off to a flying start when a friend declined the offer of designing the sleeve for Pink Floyd’s second album A Saucerful of Secrets and Thorgerson volunteered himself for the task. This was the start of a longtime partnership with the band and things went from strength to strength for the artist thereafter with an influx of commissions from some of the most influential bands of the time including Led Zeppelin. A number of these works can be seen in Opus Art gallery's upcoming exhibition Taken by Storm: The Album Cover Art of Storm Thorgerson.

What: The exhibition – made up of 15 prints, including many of his legendary Pink Floyd designs – offers a deeper understanding of Thorgerson’s inspired approach to imagemaking. There is a distinct air of performance within Thorgerson’s designs which achieve incredible surrealist effects through photography, paint and sculpture – many before the onset of digital technology. It is amazing to think that the man on fire for the Wish You Were here sleeve was actually set ablaze for the shoot and that the gaping metal busts for Division Bell’s cover were genuine creations, not figments of digital imagination. Typically, in Thorgerson’s practice, temporary installations are conceived, built and captured on camera – the compelling photographic results standing as the only evidence of the event. His works vary from images with only loose connection to the album (the naked, painted beauty lying, ear to the ground, before a gigantic tsunami-sized wave for Deepest Blue’s Late September cover) to direct, witty visual puns (like the 6 women sitting by a pool, backs painted with images of the various Pink Floyd covers, for the band’s back catalogue).

"There is a distinct air of performance within Thorgerson’s designs which achieve incredible surrealist effects through photography, paint and sculpture"

Why: Thorgerson, whose Dark Side of the Moon image has been named among the greatest album covers of all time, set a new standard for album cover art, showing that it could influence the way in which music is viewed and understood. His unique play on reality versus fantasy is designed to provoke a response from the audience, encouraging them to question what they see: "I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality...to bend reality. Some of my work begs the question of is it real or not? I use real elements in unreal ways. Is the man really on fire? Why would he just be standing there? Who puts beds on the beach? Why? Why is there a cow on the cover? It doesn't have anything to do with the album, or does it? A boxer dog in designer boxer shorts on a beach..."

Taken by Storm: The Album Cover Art of Storm Thorgerson is at the Opus Art gallery, Newcastle from February 6 - March 16.

Text by Daisy Woodward