Jeff Nuttall (1933 - 2004): Prankster in the Underground
| Dates: | 7 February 2017 |
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| Times: | 12:00 - 13:00 |
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| What is it: | Forum |
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| Organiser: | John Rylands Research Institute |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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| Speaker: | Dr Janette Martin, Jay Jeff Jones |
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The archive of Lancashire born Jeff Nuttall is the source of John Rylands Library’s current, major exhibition, ‘Off Beat’, which showcases Nuttall’s work and correspondence with many of the leading Beat Generation and Underground poets, artists and writers of the 1960s and 70s. Although a multi-talented and creatively ground-breaking figure, Nuttall has been largely overlooked since his death in 2004. Committed to the avant-garde, he wrote poetry, fiction and socio-cultural criticism, painted, sculpted, played jazz cornet, and devised performance art throughout his life. Nuttall and the international network of counter-culture talents he connected with are explored in the exhibition. Janette Martin, who curates his archive will give an overview of the collection and its great research potential. Jay Jeff Jones, co-curator of ‘Off Beat’, writer, editor and friend of Nuttall, will provide some insight to the man himself and exactly what the underground was, and why it mattered.
Speakers
Dr Janette Martin
Role: Archivist/Historian
Organisation: University of Manchester Library
Biography: Dr. Janette Martin is an archivist and historian whose interests include Victorian radical politics, and oral and public history. Previously she worked at the Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, The University of Huddersfield, Bankfield Museum in Halifax, and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. Since January 2016 she has worked with Jay Jeff Jones and Dr. Douglas Field on Off Beat: Jeff Nuttall and the International Underground - the exhibition currently on display in the cross corridor. Janette is the web editor for the Society for the Study of Labour History, and sits on the advisory board of the Co-operative Heritage Trust. She has published articles on nineteenth and twentieth history and digital and labour movement archives.
Jay Jeff Jones
Role: Editor/Poet
Biography: Jay Jeff Jones, a long-term American expatriate, has been involved with underground and alternative culture for over 30 years, mainly as an editor, writer and researcher. He worked in guerrilla theatre in San Francisco and with small presses, underground magazines and fringe theatre in London, Manchester and Yorkshire. He is co-curator of the ‘Off Beat – Jeff Nuttall and the International Underground exhibition’.
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
The Christie Room
John Rylands Research Institute and Library
150 Deansgate
Manchester
Gtr Manchester
