Crafting Ideas: Creating Culture
Alan Macdonald’s Intimate Terrorism exhibition opens on Thursday, 2 October 2025, and runs until Friday 16 October 2025, at Farsight Gallery,4 Flitcroft Street, London WC2H 8DJ.
Alan Macdonald was at the centre of the creative spinning vortex of London Underground culture from the mid 1970s to his untimely death in 2017. He forensically documented the burgeoning scenes of punk, the new romantics, buffalo boys and girls, supermodels, film stars, drag queens, cultural icons and everything in between.
As Fric and Frack with his partner, Fritz Solomon, he was part of the seminal artistic collective The House of Beauty and Culture (HOBAC), as recently exhibited at the ICA. Their collaborative work on furniture design and lighting using reclaimed wood and metal is still a major influence on contemporary design.
Since the 1980s, Alan has also worked as a production designer for feature films, contemporary dance and the world of pop when he started to conceptualise design sets for pop promotional videos for artists including: Sinead O’Connor, Massive Attack, Morrissey, INXS and New Order. He also designed live touring stage performance sets for Kylie Minogue.
Alan’s first feature film design was for the biopic of the painter Francis Bacon, Love is the Devil, starring Sir Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon with a young Daniel Craig as his lover and muse George Dyer. Following this project, for which Alan gained critical acclaim, came a long term collaboration with the film’s director John Maybury, including the time travel thriller The Jacket and the emotional 2nd World War drama The Edge of Love with Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller. The pair has also collaborated on numerous experimental video pieces such as Remembrance of Things Fast (True Stories/Visual Lies), a study of contemporary themes: aids, terrorism, sexual identity and memory.
He has also designed films for other directors including three with legendary filmmaker Stephen Frears, including the Oscar winning The Queen with Helen Mirren; and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.
Working in the world of contemporary dance, Alan has collaborated extensively with Rafael Bonachela including his early works at Rambert Dance Company, such as 21 – the collaboration with Kylie Minogue, exploring the culture of celebrity and identity, through to many repertory works for Bonachela Dance Company.
As an artist, Alan possessed a panoramic gaze for things, for the world, for the skies, for people. He speaks with collage, smiles with a Polaroid, wonders with a camera. His pencils, Sharpies, pastels, ruler, compass, scissors, biro and stapler try to keep track with his racing mind, ideas pouring onto and into whatever medium is at hand.
Alan Macdonald – Intimate Terrorism is kindly supported by the Christina Smith Foundation Christina Smith Foundation
An evening with John Maybury and Baillie Walsh on Thursday 9 October, 6-9pm. The makers of iconic videos and films in conversation in Alan Macdonald’s exhibition ‘Intimate Terrorism’
