The Illustrated Trouser Press is an assemblage by Alan Dedman. Echoing my father’s experiences as a conscript in the RAF. The gestation period for this artwork was lengthy. After our parents home was cleared during probate, we discovered items had been stolen, making the whole business difficult and unpleasant. However, the thieves didn’t take my father’s Corby Stretcher Press!
I kept the trouser press aside, knowing I would make something with it. Purchasing RAF trousers and Libidex rubber pantalons, I collated and collaged materials. The result has only come together in recent months.
In post-war Britain being smart with shiny shoes, combed hair (short back and sides) and trousers with a distinctive crease was de rigueur. Fashion was somewhat secondary to rationing, austerity meant demobbed citizens often wore uniform socially.
A man could maintain that essential crease in his trousers with ‘The Corby Stretcher Press’. My dad possessed one of these devices. Bisto brown varnish gave two cheap planks of Poplar a serious patina, so it looked the part amongst my parents G-plan bedroom furniture.
A pair of chrome plated levers applied pressure to garments sandwiched in the press. All you had to do was release them to be ready for parade! An early step towards automation, inflicting some degree of redundancy on doting housewives, freeing them up to do … other things.
This outward appearance of wholesome conformity was a collective matter for the family. A neat side-parting, good school reports and eating peas off the back of a fork at Sunday lunch, was expected of me.
Basil’s disapproval, effected through darkened brows was something to be wary of. His thunderous disdain of mischief – all part of the act. Inevitably I’d go up to my room and ‘do art’ keeping out of harm’s way. At least I could scribble anarchic violence and raise merry hell – albeit with a pencil.
One quiet afternoon I strayed into my parents’ bedroom. On the bed were two pairs of colourful rubber pantalons, with frills at the waist and ankles. One orange, the other green. I couldn’t make sense of it, assuming the rubber gear was for weight loss, because such garments would cause wearers to perspire.
Many years later my mother explained since boyhood, Basil always had a rubber fetish. Back then(1930s) it was practice to put Scarlet fever patients in rubber sheets. He had Scarlet fever, which is where it all began. This didn’t trouble me and explained why my father became animated reading ‘Walter Hottle-bottle’ stories from the Jack and Jill comic.
Keeping all this hidden beneath a veneer of respectability wasn’t comfortable. Reminiscent of the start of the film ‘Blue Velvet’, we were ‘nice’ but under the surface my dad could easily have performed opening rushes to ‘The Great Rock and Roll Swindle’.
Behind closed doors things weren’t always Tickety-boo. Basil played the pianoforte. An absurdly big instrument, his grand piano took much of the space in our living room. He would only play serious, classical stuff, denoting his ‘superior intellectual abilities’.
Tickety-boo or the Illustrated Trouser Press is a synthesis of conflicting elements, parodying in particular, the absurdity of my dad’s stance in life. I have painted a portrait of him in his RAF uniform next to ‘the Libidex girl‘ who comes from sales literature. A pair of standard issue RAF trousers is in the grip of the Corby Stretcher Press; abandoned latex pantalons shriek at us, providing gallant complementary contrast; colours have changed since the 1960s.
To heighten absurdity, I pasted an original score from Beethoven’s ‘Rondo’ – (a piece from the Royal Schools of Music examination papers in 1963), across the horizontal strut holding the press together. It’s hard to imagine parents copulating, let alone in ‘fancy dress’ to the strains of classical music.
Staff at Libidex applauded my parents’ verve, but in post-war Britain it was hard for anyone to be out about it; energies used to suppress non-conformity were socially and psychologically injurious. My father’s RAF uniform might have been what he wore by day. By night he and his wife donned completely different attire.
Juxtaposing the two hints at the Jekyll and Hyde nature of Basil’s character. Using cling-film and liquid latex I masked off areas, then went crackers with acrylics and oil bars, attacking the sacrosanct device Basil and me used.
Peeling away the latex mask, we get a Libidex girl as if on a forgotten hoarding. Basil stands to attention (no pun intended) next to her. Both wear uniform, but the contradiction smiles wryly at us, questioning the sanity of it all.
This is the first trouser press I have illustrated. Artistically, I’m not sure if everything is ‘Tickety-boo’, but my rules (for painting) mean I should never fully know what the outcome will be, or if I will like it.
Illustration demands specific outcomes – applied art, offering little room for manouevre or risk. My painting of Basil is illustrative, collaging elements onto the trouser press is too; at a deeper level, the artwork is a means of facing and exorcising personal demons. A kind of therapy.
Photographed in Atelier Dedman, the Illustrated Trouser Press is set against the painting: ‘Pointlessism‘: I like the coloured squares so much, I decided to leave them in place. Anything made here has the physical aspect of colour percolating through, unlike art school, which tends to consist of white walls, grey floors and students – who nearly always wear black uniform.
Special thanks to Alex Binnie for rubber bondage advice,
and to Rogerio Alves at Libidex.
‘The Libidex Girl’ is from company sales literature.
This assemblage by Alan Dedman consists of: an original Corby Stretcher Press, standard RAF trousers, latex pantalons, mixed media including collage material from sales literature and the Royal Schools of Music, oil paint and oil bars over acrylic. It is for sale, if you are interested, please leave your details on the contact form below.