Jamie Reid will forever be as­so­ci­ated with punk and the Sex Pistols. His bold mash up of pho­to­cop­ied found images and blackmail cut and paste slo­gan­eer­ing defined an era, but there is much more to Reid than piercing the queen’s lip with a safety pin.

‘That’s just being a victim of the media,’ he says, seemingly un­con­cer­ned that a few striking images have defined his career in the public eye, ‘and people do forget that there’s thirty years of my work: the stuff that I did with the Pistols was predated by the Suburban Press work, and since then there’s been work on No Clause 28 campaigns, the Criminal Justice Bill, the Poll Tax right up to the No Logo movement now, and that’s the kind of stuff people know me for. But there’s always been other work that I’ve done that’s to do with mysticism and magic, much more esoteric stuff.’

These two elements, the political and the spiritual, have been the corn­er­stones of Reid’s work from his earliest forays into design. ‘I was brought up as a Druid and a socialist,’ he explains, ‘and I’ve in­cor­por­ated those two things. The famous punk work came from a political back­ground with the Suburban Press. It was all very community-based, and leaning into anarchist and situ­a­tion­ist areas. We did a lot about council and business cor­rup­tion, anti-racism, the women’s movement, that kind of thing.’

‘We had no money, so we were cutting things out of news­pa­pers and magazines, and because we had our own printing press we were really able to ex­per­i­ment. It was out of that that we for­mu­lated the look that became punk. But I’ve always believed you need political change, but you need spiritual change as well, which is where my Druidism comes in.’

Reid’s latest show, Peace is Tough, is an all-en­com­pass­ing look at these two strands, from situ­a­tion­ist and anarchist DIY pub­l­ish­ing to Druid-inspired wall-hangings. Most of all the show is set to re­con­fig­ure the Arches in line with Reid’s current pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with creating whole en­vir­on­ments instead of stand-alone artworks, as seen at Stron­g­room Studios in London’s East End.

‘The Stron­g­room project is something I’ve really enjoyed because I’ve been able to take a lot of ideas from my Druidism, Shamanism and magic and put them in a DIY practical context, using colour and symbols and glyphs to create a working en­vir­on­ment that actually inspired the creation of sound. In a way it’s just as sub­ver­s­ive as anything else I’ve done, because I think it fun­da­ment­ally changes the whole creation of a working space. I firmly believe that 20th Century ar­chi­tec­ture, and the ar­chi­tec­ture of the last two millennia, has been about en­slave­ment, and brain­wash­ing people. I think you can make working spaces that actually inspire.’

The tran­s­form­a­tion of Reid’s space in the Arches is, in the spirit of punk, as yet, loosely defined. ‘We’ll just see what happens,’ Reid says, laughing, ‘I’m taking the work up there, but until it’s on the walls I won’t know how it’s going to work, and we’re hanging it the day of the opening, which is what I’m used to, really, because most of my work recently has been seen in clubs and at festivals where the visual artist is always at the bottom of the pile below the DJs and soun­d­checks for bands, it’s quite rare for me to be involved with a gallery.’

‘There’s a col­l­ab­or­a­tion with a Russian laser artist called Alexei Blinov, and a drummer Saul Hughes. We’ve done some col­l­ab­or­a­tions in the past, and Alexei is a great ex­per­i­men­ter­ and we’ve come up with a system where I can draw live, and he gets it straight out as a laser image that has that hologram look. There’s a great spon­taneity about what we’ll be doing, then there’s a mul­ti­me­dia element with slides and video of 30 years worth of my work.’

Jamie Reid’s con­tri­bu­tion to the FuncT festival is both a ret­ro­spect­ive and a chance to catch the designer and artist’s latest hi-tech project. Not that Reid has abandoned the scissors ‘n’ glue approach. ‘I’m still very much in to the collage and cut and paste,’ he says, ‘I think you can take a very punk attitude with computers, but I think they’re very untactile. I like to get my hands dirty.’