The filth and the fury: new exhibition revives the incendiary fervour of the punk years

When a groundbreaking exhibition opened at the ICA on 18 October 1976, its displays of pornographic images, chains, syringes and used tampons were so incendiary that the London art gallery was forced to take down the works and place them in boxes.

The show, Prostitution, compiled by the artistic group, COUM Transmissions, sparked a moral panic in parliament and hailed the arrival of 'punk' on the London art scene.

It was followed a year later by Jamie Reid's inflammatory cover for the Sex Pistols' single "God Save the Queen", which sent up the monarchy and became a visual catalyst for the punk movement.

In the next decade, a host of British and American artists including Malcolm McLaren, Gilbert & George, the graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and filmmaker Derek Jarman, harried the cultural establishment with a body of work that encapsulated punk.

While punk was a primarily musical movement, the new exhibition, which opens today (5 June) at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, brings together sculptures, photography and video installations to show how its themes were reflected in the artwork of the period.

The show, Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years, opens on the 30th anniversary of the Queen's Silver Jubilee and the release of the Sex Pistol's single, "God Save The Queen".

It brings together 150 works by 30 artistand deals with themes of urban decay and economic instability.

Stephen Willats produced a vision of London's post-industrial landscape by incorporating images of residents living in a slum housing estate in Hayes. Martha Rosler installed a camera inside a car which was driven along a Latino neighbourhood in San Francisco to capture the urban subculture against a soundtrack of news reports on the Nicaraguan revolution and American rock n'roll.

Other artists, including the London collective, COUM Transmissions, became notorious for using the body to 'push the limits' of performance art.

Cosey Fanni Tutti, a member of the group, worked in the porn industry in London to gather material for the Prostitution show at the ICA.

She is shown in graphic pornographic poses in images with titles such as My Driving Instructress Gave Me a Lesbian Love Lesson in her Car and Society Girl and the Blue Film Racket.

Ms Tutti, who was 21 years old when she modelled "undercover" for pornographic magazines and films, said she wanted to channel her "first hand experiences" into her artwork to produce a comment on female identity. She said the show sparked an explosive response among the establishment as well as radical feminists and the porn industry.

The Conservative MP, Nicholas Fairburn condemned the material as a "sickening outrage". Tutti was also "chased across the gallery" by a woman from the feminist magazine, Spare Rib, who took offence to the artwork. She was subsequently blacklisted by several porn magazines because they felt that she had exploited her position.

Ms Tutti is unrepentant over her contribution to the times. "The art world was consumed by money and profit," she says, "and this was a critique of the art industry and how it was quite literally, prostituting itself. We were totally absorbed in our work and had no idea it would be so shocking.

"I had to take my images off the wall and put them in boxes to show to viewers on request. We had to set up a membership because the work was viewed as pornography, even though it was a comment on identity.

"It caused such a lot of press coverage that we started collecting the articles and putting them on the wall. It fed the exhibition," she said.

Mark Sladen, the show's curator, said it created a national scandal. "Britain had a series of cultural scandals between 1976 and 1977 including the Prostitution exhibition. One month after the show, there was the famous Bill Grundy interview of the Sex Pistols which was the starting point for their national and international notoriety which culminated in June 1977 with the cover of "God Save the Queen", he said.

The exhibition programme, which runs until 9 September, includes discussions by Jamie Reid and Malcolm McLaren.