Never mind the music - a major exhibition of "punk art" has opened in London to showcase the ragged artwork that graced the album covers and posters of the mid-1970s.

Many of the album covers are unsigned

More than 400 record sleeves are hung from transparent PVC sheets in the Destroy exhibition.

Around 100 bands are featured. Key names are The Clash, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, The Fall, The Damned, Siouxie and the Banshees, Cabaret Voltaire, Sex Pistols, Stranglers, Crass and The Undertones.

Sebastian Conran, designer for The Clash, defines punk style ('0 ''40).

These groups ignored typical musical structures to create brash, cocky and innovative songs.

Their artwork was based on the same contempt for order with the most famous example remaining the Sex Pistols' sleeve picturing the Queen with a safety pin through her nose.

The exhibits are hung on PVC sheets

Emotive symbols were part of the currency. Punk art was the first since World War II to dare to use the swastika.

The intention was to shock. Destroy's creator and designer Paul Khera says the overall effect was a new movement in art, which is still worth looking at two decades later.

"The thing that's original about it is that they were hijacking history, they were just taking it because it was raw material and quite often the juxtaposition of naked women and domestic objects created an atmosphere of aggression."

The Clash

The DIY attitude created its own problems for the design team at the Royal Festival Hall.

Much of the art displayed in the exhibition has no formal "author" but is either unsigned or the product of a collaborative effort.

One of the strictures punk artists did not concern themselves with was copyright.

But many believe the revitalisation of British art that began in the 1970s led to the work of the current mainstream conceptual figures such as Damien Hirst.

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The Buzzcocks' graphic designer, Malcolm Garret, says: "The whole creative industry is permeated with people who have a fondness for that era or were inspired by it and remember it fondly.

"That sense of energy and spontaneity and self-confidence is finally seeing an international effect."

Destroy: Punk Graphic Design in Britain is part of the All that glitters ... the '70s: Towards the Millennium series at the Royal Festival Hall, February 6 to March 16.
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