Martin Aston

An exhibition of graphic design is being held in Budapest, which includes works by Vaughan Oliver and Chris Bigg. Vaughan is represented by the cover of The Breeder's album Pod. I was asked to write the copy for the brochure: find it beneath the image

Art director, graphic designer, agent provocateur, Vaughan Oliver lived by photographer Robert Doisneau’s maxim: “To suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy.” Through the combined power of suggestion, ambiguity and subversion, an appetite for visceral pleasures and an outsize imagination, and always creating in response to the music, the late Oliver expanded and enriched the art of the record sleeve, free from association with any movement, style or convention. Working mostly in conjunction with the equally visionary 4AD Records label, Oliver pursued a unique vision in a field crowded with pragmatists and people-pleasers, typically realising original designs that the artist(s) could never have envisaged, and adding new pathways into their music. Each of his designs had a compelling backstory; case in point, The Breeders’ 1990 album Pod. A near-naked man crouches, wearing a waistband of dead eels over his underwear. “It was my reaction to an all-woman band, their name, their album title and the vibrant colours I was getting from the music,” Oliver explained. “No Photoshop, just a long exposure. It needed to be long to accommodate the appendages.” That the man performing the fertility dance, splattered with blood, happens to be Oliver himself – unable to find a stand-in – makes the image even more apposite, and captures the quintessence of his spirit as well as his art.