Urban Archaeology : 21 years of Mo’ Wax, the exhibition.

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Dale Cooper

I went to the opening of the Mo’ Wax Urban Archaeology exhibition in Southbank Centre, London, and it was awesome. Here is my photo and video report.

I’m just back home to France after spending 5 crazy days in London. I’m posting this a bit late but I tried to enjoy every second of my Mo’ Wax trip rather than working on my computer… I still feel completely high about it.

So, it happened, and it was a great. Last Thursday, the Kickstarter backers who pledged for the Urban Archaeology launch party were invited to an advance visit of the exhibition at Southbank Centre, and to a book signing session with James Lavelle and Ben Drury.
To sum it all up : it was awesome. It was an opportunity to meet and chat with some of my Mo’ Wax heroes, some for the first time : James Lavelle of course, Ben Drury (best guy ever!), Andrea Parker, Trevor Jackson, Swifty, Fraser Cook, Paul Bradshaw… I’m sure I missed some more people that I couldn’t recognize. I managed to get my Urban Archaeology book signed by everyone. The following days I also met up with DJ Shadow and Tony Nwachukwu of Attica Blues who also signed the book.
And it was really cool to finally meet the UNKLE77 forum members and share (quite a lot of) free beers, big up guys!

The exhibition itself was very nice. What a surprise to find out that the Futura canvases used for DJ Krush’s Meiso LP artwork are huge! Also, seeing the Time Has Come, Strictly Turntablized, Headz or Melodious Thunk original artworks was very moving… There’s not that much unknown pieces, but that’s probably because everything is already in the book.
I had great times chatting with Ben Drury who told me some interesting things about the Mo’ Was history, for example how the first Mo’ Wax logo evolved to the new one. However, one negative point is that we didn’t have the guided tour by James Lavelle that he was supposed to give to us with the Kickstarter pledge, which was another disappointment added to the whole Kickstarter campaign. But, to be honest, I personally don’t think I’d have learned a lot though!

If you are in London I urge you to head over Southbank Centre while it’s still there!

Below is a short Go Pro video of the full exhibition, as well as a lot of photos. This is not a professional work, sorry, but I hope it will please those of you who can’t make it to London in the next few days.

Please note that the gallery is divided into 5 pages, don’t forget to browse between them!