Genesis P-Orridge’s Subversive Mail Art Goes on View
A focused exhibition of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s mail art submissions to the Canadian collective General Idea is on view at Art Metropole in Toronto through May 31. Drawn from the National Gallery of Canada’s collection, the display presents letters, collages, photographs, and other materials sent to General Idea’s FILE Magazine network in the 1970s, reflecting P-Orridge’s early career in COUM Transmissions and later Throbbing Gristle. The exhibition marks a return of the work to Art Metropole, which General Idea founded in 1974, and highlights how mail art enabled experimental practices outside conventional art-market channels. The article notes that P-Orridge (born Neil Megson in Manchester in 1950) faced legal risk for such work, including a 1975 prosecution over collages of Queen Elizabeth incorporating soft-core porn imagery.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Restitution Tangles, Warped Art Routes, Museum Reboots