Skins ‘n’ Sharps. The forgotten subculture Melbourne 1971 to 1979.

A$55 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Melbourne : Skins n Sharps, 2006. Quarto (295 x 210 mm), pictorial wrappers, staple bound, 14 pp (including wrappers), b/w and colour illustrations throughout; an as new copy. Superbly illustrated catalogue produced to accompany a low-key Melbourne exhibition staged in 2006, Skins n Sharps. The catalogue contains many original photographs, previously unpublished, documenting the unique youth subculture of 1970s Melbourne known as Sharpies. Sharpiedom was a heavy rock n roll-based movement characterized by its distinctive haircuts and dress code and its terrifying spontaneous violence (think Ziggy Stardust meets A Clockwork Orange ). The confrontational attitude and lurking danger that was associated with sharpies is immortalized in Carol Jerrems s iconic 1975 photograph, Vale Street . With their tight-fitting cardies, blunt-toed boots, hip-hugging jeans and close-cropped heads, sharpies stalked 1970s Melbourne like androgynous bovver boys. A uniquely Australian youth movement, giving sidelong nods to mod and glam but beholden to neither, sharpies were as tough as they were pretty – both the boys and the girls. They may have worn earrings and platform boots, but as former sharpie and current Oz rock legend Angry Anderson puts it, they were tough kids from tough f ing areas . The term sharp, or sharpie, was coined in Australia in the 1950s to describe well-dressed, working-class, mostly immigrant troublemakers. By the 60s a new kind of sharp was frequenting Melbourne nightspots

• Binding: Hardcover

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