GENESIS P-ORRIDGE, 1988–2004
Six objects from the James Birch Collection and a private collection
Private view for subscribers: 22–28 October 2026
Open to the public from 29 October
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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
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
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE
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
GENESIS P.ORRIDGE
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
BREYER P-ORRIDGE
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
PSYCHIC TV IS PTV3
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
PSYCHIC TV
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.
Private View
You’re seeing this a week before anyone else. The Birch Collection will arrive in small groups, and each will reach this list first. 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.
RE:CIRCULATION No. 009 · BREYER P-ORRIDGE
Found Prayer Card
A small cream envelope, unaddressed. Two signatures, a blind stamp, and eight cards inside.
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697 OBJECTS · 1008 ARTISTS · 1922–2026
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