RE:CIRCULATION No. 010. Genesis P-Orridge, 1988–2004: an exhibition in six objects, from the James Birch Collection and a private collection. First shown to subscribers of the newsletter, 22–28 October 2026.
In 1976 a Conservative MP called Genesis P-Orridge a wrecker of civilisation. In 1992, after a Channel 4 documentary the channel later retracted, police raided Genesis’s home and took tonnes of work. Genesis was abroad at the time and did not come back to live. In 2003 James Birch gave Genesis and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge a show at A22, his gallery in Clerkenwell. It was the same year the first Frieze Art Fair opened in Regent’s Park.
This exhibition follows the years in between through what was printed along the way: a ticket, a business card, flyers, a sticker.
01 — Psychic TV, Manchester, 1988
PSYCHIC TV, ticket, Manchester Polytechnic Students’ Union, 8 December 1988. 17 × 9.5 cm. Private collection.
£3 with a social card, £4 without; No. 0114. That summer, Freeze had opened in Docklands. Psychic TV were playing student unions.
02 — Cultural Engineer, New York, c. late 1990s
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE, Cultural Engineer, business card, New York, c. late 1990s. 8.9 × 5 cm. Exile years, 1992–. James Birch Collection.
Printed in New York, where Genesis had settled after 1992. A P.O. box at Peter Stuyvesant Station, a Yahoo address, four sigils. Across the top, Warhol’s fifteen minutes, extended.
03 — Transmediator, Berlin, 1996
GENESIS P.ORRIDGE, Transmediator, Tacheles and Ex & Pop, Berlin, March 1996. 21 × 7.4 cm. Exile years, 1992–. James Birch Collection.
Lectures, video screenings and an ambient set from the Berlin DJ Tanith. The taz listed unreleased films by Derek Jarman. Four years earlier, footage of Jarman reading Chaucer had been part of the tape Channel 4 presented as evidence.
04 — Transgendered Sacred Heart, A22, 2003
BREYER P-ORRIDGE, Transgendered Sacred Heart, candle sticker, A22 Gallery, London, 2003. 16.2 × 10.1 cm. James Birch Collection.
For the show at A22, stickers like this were pressed by hand onto tall glass devotional candles and signed by both artists. This one was never used.
05 — PTV3, Rostock, 2004
PSYCHIC TV IS PTV3, European De-Tour, MS Stubnitz, Rostock, 28 September 2004. 14.6 × 10.5 cm. James Birch Collection.
The re-formed band on a former East German refrigeration ship, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge on keys. On the back, in green, an electro-dub night on the same boat nine days later.
06 — La Maroquinerie, Paris, 2004
PSYCHIC TV, La Maroquinerie, Paris, 5 October 2004. 15 × 10.5 cm. James Birch Collection.
Billed on its own flyer as a figure of the underground of the 70s and 80s. By 2004 the underground arrived with its history attached.
James Birch remembers A22 packed every day. In the evenings he took Genesis and Lady Jaye to the Colony Room and the Groucho, where they kept running into Peter York, then on to Gerry’s for sausage and mash. The show, he wrote later, “was not a financial success.” It led to Berlin the following year, then the Barbican, and the archive went to the Tate, including pieces from the 1976 show that started the trouble.
The Birch Collection is arriving in small groups. If something here holds your attention, write to us and we’ll open an Online Viewing Room around it, or book an appointment to see the work in person at the archive.
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From the James Birch Collection, Part 2. Further reading: RE:CIRCULATION No. 009 · Breyer P-Orridge, Found Prayer Card.
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