Finn: Why are you having this exhibition now?
Paul: Now seems to be right because it’s evident that the 2008 crash and its impact, particularly on young people, meant they had to contend with things that previous generations hadn’t. Ok, in the late 60s they had the social turmoil of the 1968 or Greenham Common in the 80s, but here was a totally new set of circumstances where a digitised generation that had grown up with the online environment then found that in their physical environment the chips were really down; coming out of colleges and highly educated, or embarking on careers and finding out that they couldn’t afford to live where they wanted to. I have a feeling that’s why they gravitated towards print as one of the areas of expression, it was a bit of a reaction to online being quite sterile and impermanent.

Finn: That relationship between digital and print is interesting because it’s the success of online that engendered a need for something tangible and lasting.
Paul: And authentic. The late, great Malcolm McLaren defined punk rock as not being a safety pin through the ear or three chords, it was about DIY and anti-corporatism, because therein lies some kind of authentic experience. All of these magazines that we’re featuring in the show reflect that. They’re DIY with an anti-corporate attitude, you can see it in Private Eye today. It’s been going since 1961 with this mixture of biting satire and investigative journalism and it’s still an independent magazine. They’re totally anti-corporate in their outlook and their production methods

Finn: There’s an interesting lineage to a lot of these magazines – they have predecessors and hereditary influences like The Gentlewoman and Spare Rib. What do they all share in common?
Paul: They’re doing it themselves, they’re anti-corporate, they’re anti-received opinion, they’re using this as a very direct means of communication to commit to something. That’s the interesting thing about print as well, you’ve got to commit, it isn’t like setting up a blog or tweeting, you can be expressive and some people are very good at it, but when you’re producing a magazine it’s a physical object which goes through a mechanical manufacturing process, you have to be careful because otherwise you’re going to look like a dick. You have to commit to it and be there for the whole production cycle.

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