A new gallery in Liverpool's Baltic Triangle displays rare artefacts from film, literature and music, including an Elvis bust, an original Clockwork Orange poster and first editions of famous 20th-century novels.
Dave Pichilingi, known for Sound City and the Liverpool-based record label Modern Sky, has amassed hundreds of artefacts over the years. He has now put a selection of them into a curated gallery on Jordan Street.
Speaking to the ECHO, Dave said: "I've been to a place in Paris where I used to buy film posters, and I'd seen just how well they presented these things as pieces of art. I thought Liverpool and Manchester in the north has never had anything like that, so I thought I would open a gallery to do that."
Launch night and rare items
The ECHO was one of the first to look inside earlier this week, following a special launch night attended by singers Dave McCabe and Brooke Combe. Dave said: "When I opened the gallery the other night, a lot of people saw the Warriors film poster, and so many people had stories about the first time they saw that film, so these things resonate with lots of people.
"There's pieces I've got from the National Theatre, I've got a poster from the Long Day's Journey Into Night from 1971, which I never saw the original of, but I bought the posters because they reminded me of the old Cold War communist posters, and again, people just looked at them and thought, 'Wow'. They just resonated with them because it took them back to the '70s or whenever they were kids themselves, even if they never saw that play, the actual artwork and the typography and everything reminds you of a time and a place.
"I took my dad on Saturday to have a look at it because he couldn't come to the opening, and he was just flicking through the film posters and all he said was, 'Oh God, David, we've seen all of these films'. All of us who are into art, music, films, books and sports, something like this is important."
Among the more rare possessions on display is an Elvis bust. Dave said: "I've got an Elvis bust, which I believe there's not many left of now. It's by an Italian artist called Bassetti. It's actually of the fat Elvis from Vegas, but Bassetti was such a fan, he actually made him shed a few pounds in the actual sculpture that he's done."
How the gallery came about
Dave explained the gallery's origin: "It was Good Friday this year, and I was just having a minute to myself, and I just saw all of the posters I had, and I thought, 'Wow, these things are worth a lot of money now,' and I'd stored these things and kept them for so long and never really thought about them beyond the fact that I'd moved them every time we'd moved house.
"It's more a happy accident that the gallery came about. I didn't collect things thinking I was doing anything meaningful beyond the fact that I've always liked film posters and things like that. So I was just lucky enough that I kept them in pretty good archive boxes for many years."
The gallery opens amid growing demand for film, literature and music ephemera, with stores such as Idea, Unified Goods and Jerk Store making a name for themselves in London over the last five years. Dave's items are for display purposes only.
Appeal of tangible items
Dave said the desire from younger generations to own a piece of the past is no coincidence. He said: "That tangible thing of being able to hold something and smell something and look at something that's not just on a computer screen or on a phone screen I think that's still important.
"I think as everything goes more AI and everything goes more on-screen. I think the more tactility you can bring back into people's life and tangibility, the better."
More information and appointments to visit the Subculture Gallery at 16 Jordan Street can be found online.
