FREE Entry. Open Tuesday -Saturday 10am - 4pm
Workshop Gallery 1.

Celebrating the audacious talent of a legendary British design studio. Hipgnosis was founded in London in 1968 by two young photographers and Cambridge natives, Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson, later joined by Peter Christopherson. Over their fifteen year heyday they designed some of the most famous album covers in music history.

With their radical, often surreal, image compositions and innovative photographic designs they influenced generations of photo designers to follow and created iconic images which transformed the discipline of album cover design into to art; admired and loved by millions of people all over the world.

Hipgnosis in the 1970s were granted enormous freedom and access to substantial budgets with which to realise their epic ideas. A polished image of the band no longer needed - the focus was on the message of the music. Suddenly all forms of artistic expression were possible. This exhibition includes signed authenticated prints:

10cc Sheet Music

10cc Greatest Hits

10cc Bloody Tourists

10cc Deceptive Bends

10cc Look Hear

10cc How Dare You

10cc How Dare You - Gatefold

10cc The Original Soundtrack

Godley and Creme Freeze Frame

Strawbs Deadlines

Pretty Things Silk Torpedo

Scorpions Lovedrive

Be Bop Deluxe Drastic Plastic

Montrose Jump On It

Wishbone Ash New England

Rainbow Difficult To Cure

Styx Pieces Of Eight

 Pieces of Eight – Styx – 1978

[Photodesign: Aubrey Powell, Peter Christopherson and Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis]

This cover contains an idea that is as rare now as it was then, putting mature women at centre stage. Positioned in an unnatural collage these women seem out of sorts on this strange island, with their souvenir earrings juxtaposed against the majesty of the Easter Island heads. It was constructed in the very typical style of Hipgnosis whereby everything is impossibly sharp from front to back.