Art Metropole

08 Apr. - 31 May 2026

Correspondence by Artists: Genesis P-Orridge

Correspondence by Artists: Genesis P-Orridge presents mail art from musician, writer, and performance artist Genesis P-Orridge (1950–2020).

In the 1970s and 1980s, P-Orridge sent piles of mail art to General Idea, whose FILE Megazine made use of the global postal system to access an alternative network for art dissemination, not bound by the exclusionary standards of galleries of the time. This network was especially appealing to artists like P-Orridge, who faced censorship and legal persecution for experimental performance and collage artworks shared early in h/er career. The materials sent by P-Orridge to General Idea and Art Metropole were collected, and are now preserved in the Art Metropole Collection at the National Gallery of Canada’s Library and Archives. Correspondence by Artists: Genesis P-Orridge briefly returns many of these archival materials to Art Metropole, for the first time since their 1999 transfer to the National Gallery.

The mail art and ephemera included in this exhibition were sent to FILE Megazine early in P-Orridge’s artistic career, when s/he was working with COUM Transmissions and later Throbbing Gristle. P-Orridge’s dispatches were diverse in media and innovative in form: performance scripts, postcard “cut-ups”, elaborately decorated envelopes, COUM promotional ephemera, and newspaper clippings of scathing reviews—all of these materials found their way into Art Metropole’s mailbox during the proliferation of the mail art movement.

Please join Art Metropole on April 8, 2026, from 6:00-9:00 PM for the exhibition’s opening reception.

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Genesis (Breyer) P-Orridge (1950–2020) was an interdisciplinary artist born in Manchester, England. S/he is one of the founding members of performance collective COUM Transmissions, early industrial music group Throbbing Gristle, and experimental pop rock band Psychic TV. Later in h/er career, P-Orridge embarked on The Pandrogyny Project with h/er partner and collaborator Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, which aimed to surgically and spiritually transition the two artists into a combined person. P-Orridge’s complex legacy encompasses h/er multimedia artworks, h/er music, and h/er own notoriety and controversy. S/he is widely considered to be the godparent of industrial music. S/he is credited as popularizing body modifications including tattoos and piercings. H/er performances and artworks have been exhibited internationally. S/he was exiled from the United Kingdom. H/er prolific output as an artist and performer disavowed conventionality and demonstrated h/er commitment to constant evolution: whether that be transforming the culture in which one lives or the physical body that one occupies.

Correspondence by Artists: Genesis P-Orridge is co-presented by Art Metropole and New Discretions, with support from the National Gallery of Canada, Hemispheric Encounters, and the Estate of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Image

Genesis P. Orridge, "Dirty Porridge" review from Time Out Limited, No.318, April 16-22, 1976. Art Metropole Fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, Ottawa. Photo: NGC.

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