1923:
The roaring twenties:
Gallery celebrates its tenth birthday in style by inviting Jersey’s most fashionable ladies (and a few gentlemen!) to a decadent evening of champagne cocktails and lashings of gin. Flappers, dandies and the odd confused fisherman gathered at the Ritz ballroom to do the Charleston, the Tango and to rejoice in a Europe blissfully free from war. The stock market is booming, and the beautiful people are getting richer every day – literally nothing can go wrong for the next hundred years!
Features: I say, aren’t those Germans such wonderful chaps? / Art Deco houses of St Ouen / Top five ivory-tipped cigarette holders / hottest jazz 78s reviewed by Sir Lionel Chadwick, scandalous aristocrat / convertible sports cars, butlers and cable-knit sweaters fashion shoot / a doctor tells us why cocaine and cigarettes are good for you / wooden tennis racquets / spats / the Bolsheviks of Russia – would you play them at badminton?
1943:
Gallery under The occupation:
This issue was legally required to be written 30% in German, so every page has the word WUNDERBAR inserted at random into the text. The magazine was printed on potato peelings that have been flattened into paper with a mangle. As well as ‘vintage fashion’ (clothes that somebody was buried in) it contains a variety of recipes, all containing potato peelings, and so Gallery becomes the first lifestyle magazine that can itself be consumed in a broth flavoured with limpets and gravel. All advertising space was force-purchased by the German authorities, and consists of invitations to supply information on your neighbours, reports of how well the war is going in Europe and the best way to smash a crystal radio set. Schnell!
Features: Glowing reviews of Volkswagen cars / guide to growing a sexy little moustache/ fashion with Hugo Boss / how to goosestep convincingly / our noble allies: Italy and Spain / a lengthy opinion piece about how to repair a mangle, which when read upside down spells out ‘HITLER IS A DIRTY ROTTER’. In response, the entire Gallery staff were rounded up and forced to labour building the cafe outside the underground hospital.
1963:
Gallery swings into the psychedelic sixties.
Infused with the rebellious sprit of the Paris communes, the magazine asks ‘When will Jersey be ready to see collar length hair on men?’ There’s an interview with The Beatles, who tell us how much they can’t wait to come back and play Springfield Stadium. For some reason, John Lennon keeps giggling and smells like a spice cupboard.
Features: How to compose a protest song on your acoustic guitar / Could Jersey send a man to the moon? If you don’t like it there’s a rocket in the morning / the contraceptive pill – will it make our women go crazy? / BBC2 launch special: is three channels too many?
1973:
Gallery turns on and drops out.
This issue is mostly unreadable as it is printed in lime green on fuschia pink. The centre pages are a collage of optical illusions, horrific images from the Vietnam war and a cartoon of Alice in Wonderland riding a cross-eyed walrus along Colomberie. It contains interviews with Donovan, Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd and the Bay City Rollers. Features: Kung fu fighting – tips on opening your own dojo / twenty different ways to make fondue / Jersey’s finest cabaret singers interviewed / banks – there seem to be a lot of them about at the moment / gorgeous polyester fashion shoot / adverts for shag-pile carpets, hula hoops and asbestos sheeting / LSD: we ask all twelve constables whether they’re ready to expand their minds.
1983:
Gallery gets fresh for the weekend.
Gallery unleashes its inner Loadsamoney with an issue dedicated to dosh, birds and why Maggie Thatcher is number one. Every single person in the magazine (including babies) has a mullet, and the magazine comes with a sample can of hairspray with Fido Dido on it.
Features: Sushi – yes, it really is raw fish / Ferris Bueller’s Day Trip to Sark / interview with Pat Sharp, man of the year / report on Fort Regent breakdancing contest / how to install satellite TV and what you can look forward to on all eight channels / mobile phones of the future – one day they’ll fit in your briefcase / walkmans and ghetto blasters reviewed – which does Kajagoogoo sound best on? / Wall Street – why we should base our entire economy on the money-making miracle that can’t possibly go wrong.
2053:
multi-dimensional holographic Gallery.
Gallery magazine returns to its roots for this one off publication. Re-live the days when human life existed above water and was forced to work for a living with this historical review of Gallery’s illustrious history. Once downloaded to your internal data glands, this souvenir issue will then be available to experience as a VR matrix or to home-print in vintage pseudo-paper for those beings who delight in retro-style physical sensations. Readers in cryo tanks and pan-global consciousness farms have the option of experiencing the issue as a concentrated neural burst, and for the first time Gallery will be available as an info-enzyme that can be consumed by octospecies and other cephalopeople. Whatever your means of consuming Gallery, you will be momentarily convinced that you are a vintage, unmodified human being for the duration of the reading experience.
Features: Virtual tours around the Mars colony / top twenty things we were laughably wrong about before quantum mechanics / how humankind could have prevented the catastrophe of 2020 / the sixth gender: what you can do to experience it for yourself / immigrants: are they coming here and stealing our pods?
