| Company name | Indica Gallery |
|---|
| Foundation | 1965 |
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| Location city | Mason's Yard (off Duke Street) London |
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| Location country | England |
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| Key people | Paul McCartney, Barry Miles, John Dunbar, Peter Asher |
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| Area served | London |
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| Industry | Literature, art gallery |
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| Products | Books, art |
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Indica Gallery was a counterculture art gallery in Mason's Yard (off Duke Street), St. James's, London, England during the late 1960s, in the basement of the Indica Bookshop co-owned by John Dunbar, Peter Asher and Barry Miles. It was supported by Paul McCartney and hosted a show of Yoko Ono's work in November 1966 at which Ono first met John Lennon.
The International Times newspaper was started in the basement of the Indica bookshop.
Indica Books and Gallery
Miles had been running the bookshop and alternative
happenings venue
Better Books but with new, more traditional, owners arriving, had been planning to open his own bookstore/venue. Through Paolo Leonni, Miles met John Dunbar who was planning on opening a gallery, and with John's friend Peter Asher as silent partner, they combined their ideas into a company called Miles, Asher and Dunbar Limited (MAD) to start the Indica Books and Gallery in September 1965, as an outlet for
art and
literature. They found empty premises at 6 Masons Yard, which was in the same courtyard as the
Scotch of St James club, where John Dunbar was leaving with his girlfriend
Marianne Faithful, when he discovered the place.
McCartney's involvement
Whilst living in the Asher family house, 57 Wimpole Street, Paul McCartney became involved with the emerging
underground scene in London and the setting up of the bookshop/gallery. McCartney was the Indica bookshop's first customer - before it even had premises - as he used to look through the books at night, stored in the Ashers' basement, and leave a note for the books he had taken to be put on his
account. Some of the first books he bought were
Ed Sanders "
Peace Eye Poems'", "
and the Mind" by
Deropp, and "
Gandhi on Non-violence". The wood that was needed for the shelves and
shop counter was picked up from the
lumber yard by Dunbar and Miles in McCartney's
Aston Martin car. Artists such as
Pete Brown also helped in the renovation of the Indica, and Brown remarked that as he was helping to paint the interior, he would often look over his shoulder and see McCartney, who also frequently visited the Scotch, sawing a piece of wood.
McCartney's girlfriend, Peter Asher's sister Jane Asher, donated the shop's first cash till, which was an old Victorian till that she had played with as a young girl. McCartney helped to draw the flyers - which were used to advertise the Indica's opening - and also designed the wrapping paper. Barry Miles later introduced McCartney to the works of William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg, and their conversations were infused with subjects such as Buddhism, drugs, and 'pataphysics, which McCartney later put into the lyrics of Maxwell's Silver Hammer. After one evening at Lennox Gardens, McCartney had an idea that he told to John Lennon the next day, which was an album title called "McCartney goes too far", which Lennon thought was a great title, and insisted that McCartney should do it.
Indica Bookshop
In 1966, the Indica bookshop was separated from the Indica Gallery, and moved to 102
Southampton Row in the summer of 1966.
2006 exhibition
An exhibition at
Riflemaker (a gallery on Beak Street,
London,
England) in November 2006 re-visits Indica 40 years after it was closed. It includes work by the original artists including
Liliane Lijn,
Boyle Family/Mark Boyle and
Carlos Cruz-Diez as well as a younger generation of artists whose work relates to some of the ideas first presented there.
Notes
References
External links
Playing to the gallery - It's 40 years since Indica set London swinging. Kate Bernard catches up with its founding gallerist John Dunbar. Observer - November 2006
John Dunbar quoted in Tate Magazine (Summer 2004) - Indica - fast and loose (my dead gallery) @ thecentreofattention.org
Yoko Ono Exhibitions: Indica Gallery (1966)
Riflemaker becomes Indica, 2006-7
Nyehaus Becomes Indica - Nov 8 to Dec 22, 2007
Category:Art museums and galleries in London
Category:Defunct art museums and galleries
Category:Contemporary art galleries
Category:Paul McCartney
Category:Former buildings and structures of Westminster
Category:Museums established in 1965
