Jonh Hurford and retro Sixties psychedelia
Jo hn Hurford, Middle Earth Love Festival , Magic Garden Posters, 1979, 44 x 59 cm, offset lithograph in dark blue on red or green thin paper. In August 2015 I acquired a little-known psychedelic poster which was printed in England during 1979 and titled Middle Earth Love Festival . It celebrated an event during the 1960s which never happened - a rock music festival at the inner London venue known as Middle Earth, featuring bands Pink Floyd, the Move, Soft Machine and Arthur Brown. The design was based on an original drawing and poster by Johnny Hurford from 1968, though some additional elements had been added for the 1979 version, including the words Love Love Love in the box area at the lower right of the image. A description of the poster, along with Hurford's own account of the original work and its eventual manifestation, is presented below, taken in part from the book Johnny - the work of psychedelic artist John Hurford (Hill 2006) and this author's own resea