One of the artists who lit up London in Swinging Sixties

THE kaleidoscopic art that dripped off gallery walls back in the 60s, is as much a part of our collective cultural memory of that decade as The Beatles and the Stones, mini-skirts and flower power.

One of its key proponents at the time was Dudley Edwards who co-founded the pioneering pop art collective BEV, alongside Doug Binder, founding curator at Dean Clough, and became a leading light in London’s psychedelic art scene.

The Halifax-born artist rose to prominence through his colour-saturated work that included customised cars and painted furniture, including Paul McCartney’s “magic piano”, and several pieces from this period form part of his latest solo exhibition, which goes on display at RedHouse Originals gallery in Harrogate from this weekend.

In Technicolour – the early work of Dudley Edwards and his cohorts, features 70 works ranging from his commissions for The Beatles, right up to his work from the early 90s.

It includes original paintings, rare pen and ink sketches and artefacts from throughout his career, many of which will be going on public display for the first time, as well as a collection of limited edition prints.

The exhibition coincides with the launch of a new book – Electrical Banana – Masters of Psychedelic Art, written by Norman Hathaway and Dan Nadel, which highlights the work of seven key figures in this art movement, including Edwards.

Looking back, he views this period of his life with ambivalence. “I’m proud of the work I did but at the same time it feels like it was done by another person in another time, it doesn’t feel like it was me but another incarnation of me,” he says. “Sometimes people try and intellectualise what we were doing, but it was quite simple really. In the post-war era it felt like it was a black and white world and when the Asian immigrants came over to Bradford they painted their doorways in all these amazing colour combinations, and because they’d come from such a colourful country they must have felt this greyness quite vividly and wanted to inject some colour into it. I was really impressed with that and by the time I got to London I just wanted to bring that colour to everything.”

Once there, he found himself part of a radical, new cultural landscape. “There was this desire among young people to do things themselves, whether it was pirate radio stations or underground magazines, people were fed up with the big corporations.” So did he realise he was witnessing history unfold? “Yes and no. When you’re in the middle of something, you don’t realise the importance of what’s happening.

“A few years ago, the Tate in Liverpool had a Sixties exhibition and I went along and it was the same old faces who turned up, those who created the art back then, and I realised just how few people were responsible for that whole scene – I suppose we hit the zeitgeist but without realising it at the time.”

In Technicolour, RedHouse Originals, Harrogate, to May 26.

Art life: The colourful world of Dudley Edwards

Dudley Edwards was born in Halifax in 1944 and studied at Bradford’s College of Art.

In the mid-60s he moved to London where he formed an art collective called BEV with fellow artist Doug Binder, curator at Dean Clough, and David Vaughan, painting colourful murals and turning cars and furniture into psychedelic art.

He became friends with Paul McCartney and painted his legendary “magic piano”, as well as creating a mural for Ringo Starr.

Edwards is one of seven international artists featured in a new book, Electric Banana – Masters of Psychedelic Art.