Fathers of Pop - ACE085.6

Photograph of John McHale with some of his photographic collection. McHale talking about the familiarity of images of America because of cinema. Magda Cordell on McHale unpacking a collection of magazines on his return from a trip. Examples of McHale’s work, humanoid figures incorporating mass media images, many of them of domestic objects. Photograph of Alison and Peter Smithson, and part of a film of their House of the Future designed for the 1956 Ideal Home Exhibition. Colour photographs of the House compared with images of the Cadillac, as the House was designed like a car and meant to be marketed like a car. Banham says that the Independent Group "faded away" in 1955, just about the same time as the "This is Tomorrow" exhibition was mounted. The Cadillac pulls up outside the Whitechapel Art Gallery, east London. Pathé News item, The Face of Tomorrow, on the exhibition. Henderson talking about the materials that went into the "patio" exhibit he put together with Paolozzi and the Smithsons. Cordell now believes the media impact was more outside than inside the exhibition. Photographs of Robbie the Robot exhibit, and extract from The Forbidden Planet. Photographs of other exhibits. Alloway’s impression of some of the exhibits, with photographs. Photographs of workmen assembling the Robbie the Robot exhibit. McHale on this section of the exhibition which he feels was remarkably prescient, a forerunner of Swinging London. Hamilton’s exhibit, a collage of images from American magazines. Hamilton on how it was constructed, and on its conventional perspective.