Inevitably, the year 1996 is now three decades away, in the far distant olden days. Back then things were different in many ways. I was entertained by a variety of diversions while I was working on the artwork for a forthcoming LP by the then slightly-well-known musicians collectively known as Radiohead. One of those diversions was an excellent book called Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh, and I was pleased to hear that this book had just been made into a film by Danny Boyle. It was a fantastic film, brilliantly acted, propulsively directed, and advertised with some brilliantly orange graphics, which I later found out had been made by a person named Blam, who was working at an agency called Stylorouge.
You may not know that orange used to be the colour used on rail tickets, when rail tickets were an actual thing rather than archaic documents from history, like illuminated manuscripts or cuneiform writing. Anyway, I guess that's why Blam chose orange for the Trainspotting artwork. I totally love orange, it's my second-favourite colour.
Anyway then, or rather now, 30 years later, Blam got in touch to tell me that he was holding an exhibition at Atom Gallery in north London to celebrate 30 years since Trainspotting came out, or at least acknowledge the fact that Trainspotting, the 1990s, our youth and all of that was a very long time ago, we were all old now, and those times were history, like codpieces or Viking ship burials. These were not his exact words, but that's the gist of it, as far as I can remember.
Well, fair enough, I thought. I figured that I could make a version of the artwork I was making at the time, but instead of using a cold pale blue I would use orange, like the graphics Blam had made for the film. And so here it it...
Trainspotters #T30
A group show curated by @grow_up_art
celebrating 30 years of all things Trainspotting
at Atom Galery, 21st Feb 14th March 2026
10% of all sales going to the Big Issue UK
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