Let It Gibbon: Exhibition & Pop Up Shop

Article Andrew Barnes

From the 18th to the 20th August, Let It Gibbon will be hosting a pop up gallery and shop along with 55factory - Location The Muse, 269 Portobello Road, W11 1LR

Andrew Rutland was in the rag trade when he stumbled upon his joyous bounty of T-shirt transfers.
More specifically, he was the owner of Pose, a streetwear brand. He’d get T-shirts printed up on Well Street – by The Tremeloes’ former roadie, no less – and buy other garments straight from safety-wear manufacturers, retrofitting them with rave-friendly, tongue-in-cheek reflective badges.
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“I came across a room filled to the brim with old 1970s T-shirt transfers,” Rutland recounts. “A deal was hastily struck and I drove all the transfers away in a Luton van the following day.”
Twenty years on, Rutland’s find has been released from his garage and back out onto the streets of Hackney, under the guise of Let It Gibbon.

“The guy who sold me the transfers told me there were 100,000 when I bought them,” Rutland reveals. “I never counted them or even really sorted them out until recently but I reckon there’s way more. There are around 200 different designs.”

​The name, of course, comes from The Goodies’ legendary Funky Gibbon, a song commemorated in one of the transfer designs, and a DJ spinning period-accurate children’s music is a key part of the Let It Gibbon experience. (A top five of Let It Gibbon tunes follows this piece.

The Let it Gibbon Top 5 Children’s Tunes.

1. The Funky Gibbon – The Goodies
2. The Laughing Policeman – The Suspicions (“a crazy experimental 80s version of the 20s children’s classic”)
3. Tiger Feet – Mud
4. Mah Na Mah Na – Pierro Umiliani (“the original of the tune made famous by The Muppets originally recorded for a Swedish porn film”)
5. Yakety Sax – Mexicali Singers (“the Benny Hill theme tune reimagined”)

Article Source Hackney Citizen