Indica Gallery

Indica Gallery was run by John Dunbar, who had been art critic for the Scotsman. I met him through an American poet, Paulo Lionni, who I’d given a reading at Better Books, though John thinks we met at the Albert Hall Poetry Reading that summer. John wanted to open his own gallery and I was looking to start a bookshop, it seemed like the ideal combination. Anyway, with the addition of John’s great friend Peter Asher, we started MAD, Miles Asher and Dunbar Ltd, to run Indica (which was named, yes, after Cannabis Indica.)  The gallery is probably still remembered for just one show, Yoko Ono’s first European show that John  Lennon turned up to when we were still hanging it. Forty years later, Riflemaker Gallery in Beak Street recreated the Indica Experience, as it were, and Yoko came over specially to tie up the audience in wool and climb into the original black bag with John Dunbar. Even more astonishing this recreation show travelled to New York in 2010 and John and I went over for it. There are a couple of pictures here from that: me introducing Liliane Lijn to the audience from a balcony, (with a Takis in the background) and John and I enjoying a drink. I wrote a lot about Indica in my In The Sixties book, and there are many academic references to it available. Maybe one day we can persuade John  to write his memoirs.