Malcolm Garrett’s Orgasm Addict artwork is redesigned 120 times to mark its 40th Anniversary

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Buzzcocks’ single Orgasm Addict, a new exhibition sees 120 creatives reworking the original cover for a new exhibition. Curated by the original designer Malcolm Garrett and DR.ME, the only restrictions given were that the designs had to use the original blue and yellow Pantone 286 colours and be sized at 7×7 inches.

Contributions from all over the world were received including work by Bráulio Amado, Catalogue, Peter Saville, Eve Warren, Mariel Osborn and many more. “From the first meeting we had with Malcolm we outlined that we wanted to try and have as equal a split of female to male designers as possible involved. This was to celebrate the gender split cover design of the original sleeve with the brilliant collage artist Linder Sterling’s feminist piece being turned upside down and stripped back to a more graphic blue and yellow by Malcolm,” explains Mark Edwards of DR.ME. “It’s also become a worrying trend in design exhibitions that they are highly male-centric so we wanted to address this, if I was harsh I would say we failed as the split isn’t 50/50!”

The idea for the exhibition was conceived by Design Manchester and the artworks will be on display at bars and restaurants around the city for the duration of the event. “There will be oversized artworks in public spaces,” says Mark. “We wanted Peter Saville’s work to go into a porn shop in the northern quarter because the QR code he created for his cover takes you to a pretty NSFW video.”

Exhibitions of the Orgasm Addict Reframed can be found in the window of art shop Fred Aldous and The Refuge, where there will be a preview on 18 October.