Elvis Rebel No. 1 T-Shirt

The first design in John Dove and Molly White's Rebel series, produced at Kitsch-22, 22 Woodstock Street, London — the artists' garish West End shop, then in its second year. Dove and White had been making Elvis montages since 1966 under their Wonder Workshop label; the totem studio version was built on plywood, framed in rhinestones with a stained-glass 'KING' at the top, accreting new images over old until, in the artists' phrasing, 'we were certain there were no more better options.' When Elvis Presley, the original rebel, died in August 1977, Dove and White closed Kitsch-22 for three months to design an entire new collection of T-shirts. The Elvis Rebel — Rebel No. 1 — was the first design out: a memorial in screen-print, the bleached portrait emerging from a black ground in the discharge-print effect that became the signature visual logic of the Rebel series. The present T-shirt is the earliest surviving example in the artists' archive.

PROVENANCE:

From the personal archive of John Dove and Molly White