Few artists can make the Queen look cheap or a safety-pin look expensive. But this is what artist and designer Judy Blame does at his best. Such works are currently on show at London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts and we love the two adjoining exhibitions that comprise this Blame extravaganza.

The first part of the exhibition, Never Again, explores Blame’s work as an accessories designer and stylist, while in the upstairs gallery the focus is on Blame’s contemporaries, collaborations and major influences.

In the early 1980s Blame arrived on the London club scene with a distinctive, non-conformist attitude. Alongside John Moore, Blame established the craft collective The House of Beauty and Culture in 1985, a collective which ultimately shot to fame in fashion circles and went on to collaborate with designers like John Galliano, Rei Kawakubo, Gareth Pugh and Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton.

We loved the tension between the polished gallery and the raw, unpolished creativity of Blame’s myriad creations. Many of the works on show create a paradoxical idea of luxury made using industrial textures or found objects – badges, bottle tops, plastic bags or keys – transformed into lavish jewellery; creating headpieces from buttons, linking padlocks into heavy gold necklaces.

Upstairs we were immediately greeted by Excessive Sensual Indulgence, a fabulous, punkish light installation created by artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, while other works in this second exhibition contextualise Blame’s artistic inspiration as originating alongside the Sex Pistol as well as the early London drag scene (of which Blame was a part) as seen in the display of Charles Atlas’s film Hail the New Puritan. We also see intimate portraits of Blame taken by Juergen Teller and in the late Derek Jarman’s film B2.

We love Blame’s project of repurposing the every day; where the mundane is made ever more glamorous and value is found in the smallest of everyday objects.

Judy Blame: Never Again and Artistic Differences are on at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts from 29 June 2016 until 4 September 2016.