LIMITED AVAILABILITY. FEW COPIES ONLY.

Limited edition (100) silk-screened box, hand numbered and signed by the artist.

Contains additional 11×14 traditional c-print, and loose silkscreen cover image.

Hundreds of youths went on a rampage in Huntington Beach on Sunday afternoon, pelting police officers with rocks and bottles, storming a large lifeguard station and overturning and burning police vehicles.

11.5×15.75″
PAGES: 160gsm Naturalis Matt Absolute White,
Saddle stitched with silkscreened cover
Box: 11.75″ x 17.75″ x 1″

“Hundreds of youths went on a rampage in Huntington Beach on Sunday afternoon, pelting police officers with rocks and bottles, storming a large lifeguard station and overturning and burning police vehicles.

Police said at least 12 people were injured, including five Huntington Beach officers and one Orange County sheriff’s deputy. Thirteen people were arrested but scores of youths who threw bottles at officers or took part in the destruction escaped in the confusion.

The disturbance broke out about 2 p.m. behind bleachers being used for the final day of the Ocean Pacific Pro Surfing Championships, which drew a crowd estimated at 100,000 people.

Witnesses said the melee had no direct connection to the surfing contest but instead was triggered by two or more men behind the bleachers immediately south of the Huntington Beach Pier who were trying to take off the bathing suits of two young women.

“We’ve got a riot and we’re making arrests,” Huntington Beach Lt. Jack Reinholtz said shortly after the melee began. He said it was the worst disturbance to occur in Huntington Beach since a 1969 Easter weekend riot.

He said his group of about 10 officers was surrounded by ‘about 5,000 people. They could have killed us if they wanted to.’”
– Los Angeles Times, September 1, 1986

On the last day of August, 1986, Nick Waplington woke up late and turned on the news. An Aeromexico DC9 had collided with a light aircraft going to Big Bear for the weekend. Both aircraft dropped from the sky onto residential Cerritas, near Huntington Beach, just south of Los Angeles, killing all those onboard both planes — plus a number of people unlucky enough to be at home that Labor Day morning.

Waplington then drove to Huntington Beach, where he had been planning to watch the OP Surf Pro Championships. Upon arrival, all hell was breaking loose. Having only one roll of 24 exposure film, Waplington documented the chaos exploding around him in 25 concise frames.

The photographs within Surf Riot contradict the standard imagery associated with American surf culture from the 1980s. Gone is the laid-back Adonis figure and his flaxen-haired beach babe, and instead, in full lurid color, we see sunburned teens running wild. Unlike other youth revolts, this surf riot bears little in the name of protest— it”s merely a spontaneous eruption of violence just for the sport of it. Coca Cola cups and radio station promotions lie trampled underfoot, commercial symbols of contentment cast aside.

New York based British artist Nick Waplington has created a number of acclaimed photographic books including Living Room (1991), Other Edens (1993), The Wedding (1994) Safety in Numbers (1996), and Truth or Consequences (2001). Solo exhibitions include The Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, 1992, Photographer”s Gallery, 1995, the Underwood Street Gallery, 1999, and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 2007. In addition, Waplington’s work was exhibited at the 2001 Venice Biennale and is held within a number of international collections, not limited to the MoMA, The Guggenheim, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Published by Little Big Man, SURF RIOT is released in a strictly limited edition of 300 copies, with 100 specially packaged and containing a hand-numbered photographic edition.