Room 5 of the Barbican exhibition is given over to the artist group COUM Transmissions, whose retrospective at the ICA in London in October 1976, entitled Prostitution, contained photographic documentation of their performance-based art. The material that made the show infamous however, was a series of ‘magazine action’ pieces by Cosey Fanni Tutti – the appropriated pages of pornographic magazines for which she had posed. Prostitution used many punk strategies to challenge social norms and power structures, including appropriation and collage, but in particular it used transgressive bodily imagery as a vehicle for empowerment and social critique. Just as modern art works are frequently held up for ridicule and demonised by the popular press, the COUM installation caused a major public outcry, leading to the then Arts Council chairman effectively disowning the work which his organisation had financed. Without debating the merits of the individual piece it seems probable that works of this kind were a bridgehead for contemporary artists Damien Hirst or Jake and Dinos Chapman who have carried the art mainstream far beyond the barriers that were being challenged in the late 1970s.

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Derek Jarman's Jubliee formed a bridge between the febrile world of outsider art and the nihilstic maelstrom of the punk rock clubs. Our reviewer, Derek Robinson said of the film: "I really wish the film could be reviewed by someone else more in touch with the angry juvenile nihilism of the punk rock phenomenon". That probably means he liked it.

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Tony Partington gave readers a punk rock primer which gave them all the information they needed to go out and form bands of their own.

Read his original 1977 punk band manual here

The Sex Pistols' seleeve for Never Mind the Bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols exemplified the crude raw style of graphic art in the late 1970s. Unfortunately the crude raw language of the title offended many record buyers. Eventually the record was deemed saleable in a court of law.

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