Australian poster collectives

Last updated

Australian poster collectives were artist collectives established in the late 1960s, 70s and 80s in the capital cities of Australia, largely led by women and focused on various forms of political activism.

Contents

There were also such collectives in the 1990s, such as RedPlanet.

History and description

The collectives were formed mainly in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, but also in other Australian capital cities, during the period from approximately 1965 to the 1980s. The collectives were formed by artists concerned with social justice, women's rights, political activism, anti-Vietnam war protest, environmentalism, LGBT rights and Indigenous Australians' rights. [1] [2]

Collectives made posters for concerts, bands, marches and community groups. Feminists were active in the collectives and some were women-only collectives. [3] Women were leaders in the poster collective movement, establishing groups, providing training, opening the groups up to other women and decision-making by consensus. [4]

The collectives were considered to be democratic art movements outside the gallery systems, able to quickly reflect changing social and political views and challenge social norms by designing, printing and displaying posters in public areas. [1] [5] [3] Some artists were members of more than one collective and often did not sign their name to posters but attributed them to the collective. [1] [4]

Similar collectives emerged in the UK, Europe, the US and Cuba during that time. [5] [6] [7]

This article covers Australian poster collectives from the 60s to 80s rather than later collectives from the 1990s such as RedPlanet. [8] [9]

Collections

Posters produced by the collectives are held in the National Library of Australia, [10] National Gallery of Australia (NGA), [11] [12] [2] Flinders University Museum of Art, [13] Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), [14] Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences [15] and Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney. [2]

Poster collectives and artists

Poster collectives were influential in developing the community arts movement and some of the collectives expanded into training workshops, community arts projects, community food co-operatives and other community support. [16] [1] Some artists within these collectives later worked in partnership with community arts groups and/or developed their own individual art practices and careers. The following list of poster collectives and artists is not exhaustive but shows the foundational influence of the collectives on the careers of some Australian contemporary and community artists.

By location, the poster collectives and their members included:

Sydney

Melbourne

Canberra

Adelaide

Brisbane

Darwin, Katherine, Northern Territory

Related Research Articles

Chips Mackinolty is an Australian artist. He was involved in the campaigns against the war in Vietnam by producing posters, and was a key figure in the radical poster movement.

Heather Shimmen is a contemporary Australian visual artist whose paintings, prints and collages often use sinister historical imagery from 16th to 19th century.

Basil Hadley was an English Australian printmaker and painter. His works are represented in National and State public galleries around Australia and in various private collections.

Eric Prentice Anchor Thake was an Australian artist, designer, painter, printmaker and war artist.

Alun Leach-Jones, was a British-born Australian artist known for his range of work covering painting, drawing, sculpture, linocuts, screenprints and etchings.

The Earthworks Poster Collective was an Australian artist collective that operated out of the Sydney University Art Workshop, more commonly known as the Tin Sheds, in the 1970s. The collective, based in Sydney, New South Wales, was active from 1972 to 1979.

Wendy Murray is a visual artist and arts educator, formerly known as Mini Graff. Under her former persona, Murray worked as an urban street poster artist between 2003–2010, working in and around Sydney's urban fringe. Since 2014, Murray's art expanded into traditional forms of drawing and artist book design, whilst still engaging with social and political issues through poster making. Murray's use of letraset transfers, accompanied with vibrant colours and fluorescent inks, references the work of studios from the 1960s through to the 1980s, including the community-based Earthworks Poster Collective and Redback Graphix. A 2018 collaboration with The Urban Crew, a 17-person collective of socially engaged geographers, planners, political scientists and sociologists, resulted in the Sydney – We Need to Talk! artist book, addressing issues of development, transport congestion, housing affordability and commercialisation of public space.

Toni Robertson is a visual artist, art historian and printmaker from Sydney, Australia. She is known for her poster making and involvement in the Earthworks Poster Collective, which operated out of the "Tin Shed" art workshops at the University of Sydney.

Alison Alder is an artist working predominantly within screen-printing media, technology-based works and "constructed environments" to explore social issues in Australia, including Indigenous Australian communities, and other organisations. She co-founded the Megalo International Silkscreen Collective with a collective of activists including Colin Little, the founder of earthworks Poster Collective, in 1980.

Julia Church is an Australian artist and has works in painting, printmaking, poster art and graphic design. She is also an author having written multiple books and journal articles on Australian women's art and artistic culture. Her work is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

Tanya Myshkin is an Australian printmaker, born in Adelaide, South Australia but primarily based in Canberra. She is primarily known for her engraving and printmaking works, such as June Lombard, and Dried Mouse. Much of her work is centred around the Australian landscape and culture, and based on Australian textiles such as Eucalyptus Camaldulensis.

eX De Medici is an Australian artist, whose works include Installation art, painting, photography, and drawing. Her works often deal with concepts of power and violence, and recurring motifs include skulls, helmets, guns and the swastika symbol. She has exhibited widely across Australia and is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Canberra Museum and Gallery, Australian state galleries and in private collections. de Medici was an Artist Fellow at the CSIRO for more than a decade, was awarded a print making fellowship in 2006, and was an official war artist for The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands. She will be a featured artist in the NGA's major exhibition in 2020-2021, Know My Name, that will feature Australian women artists 1900 to today.

Cristina Asquith Baker (1868–1960) was an Australian artist known for her paintings and lithographs. She studied with Frederick McCubbin, one of the key artists of the Australian impressionist Heidelberg school, but she was independent and did not tie herself to a single school of thought. She twice studied abroad, in Paris and London, gaining expertise in various other forms of artistic expression such as lithography and carpet-making.

Dorothy Djukulul is a traditional Australian Aboriginal artist who lives in Ramingining in Central Arnhem Land. She speaks Ganalbingu and is a part of the Gurrumba Gurrumba clan, who identify as being a part of the Yirrija moiety.

Marie Elizabeth Rita McMahon is an Australian artist, known for her paintings, prints, posters, drawings, and design work. Born in Melbourne, she has worked in various communities of Australian Aboriginal people and as of 2020 works in Sydney. Her work has focused on social, political, and environmental issues. Her posters about Aboriginal rights and Aboriginal life appear in major gallery collections in Australia.

Alice Hinton-Bateup is an Australian artist and print-maker. In the 1980s she was active in Garage Graphics, a print workshop in Mt. Druitt, Sydney, which included a number of Aboriginal artists. They produced posters that became important in the struggle for Aboriginal rights in Australia.

Hertha Kluge-Pott is a German-born Australian printmaker based in Melbourne.

The Women's Domestic Needlework Group was established in 1976 by Australian feminist artists Marie McMahon and Frances Phoenix, members of the Sydney branch of the Women's Art Movement, with an interest in reclaiming and focusing attention on the undervalued field of women's traditional craft work. The other members of the collective were Joan Grounds, Bernadette Krone, Kathy Letray, Patricia McDonald, Noela Taylor and Loretta Vieceli.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Brash</span> 20th century Australian woman printmaker

Barbara Nancy Brash was a twentieth-century post-war Australian artist known for her painting and innovative printmaking. In an extensive career she contributed to the Melbourne Modernist art scene, beside other significant women artists including: Mary Macqueen, Dorothy Braund, Anne Marie Graham, Constance Stokes, Anne Montgomery (artist) and Nancy Grant.

The Tin Sheds was the common name of the Sydney University Art Workshop was an Australian art workshop in Sydney, New South Wales, founded in 1969. Its name lives on in the Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Groups such as Optronic Kinetics and the Earthworks Poster Collective operated out of Tin Sheds.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mayhew, Louise. "Jill Posters Will Be Prosecuted: Australia's women-only print collectives from the 1970s and 1980s" (PDF). Crossart. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 February 2019. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Tin Sheds Poster Collection". Research Data Australia. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
  3. 1 2 "Eye Magazine | Feature | Political clout: Australian posters". www.eyemagazine.com. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  4. 1 2 Perin, Victoria (18 February 2017). "Don't be too Polite: Posters and Activism". Memo Review. 2017 (7).
  5. 1 2 Baines, Jess (10 October 2012). "Experiments in democratic participation: feminist printshop collectives". Cultural policy journal. Archived from the original on 31 October 2013. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  6. ↑ "Experiments in democratic participation: feminist printshop collectives". Cultural Policy, Criticism and Management Research. 10 October 2012. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  7. ↑ Bond, Liz (15 April 2014). "Poster Magic. 50 years of loud silence". This Magnificent Life. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  8. 1 2 "State Library Victoria The politics of poster making: the RedPlanet archive". blogs.slv.vic.gov.au. 11 November 2016. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  9. ↑ "RedPlanet Press and the politics of poster making". State Library Victoria. 18 February 2021. Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  10. ↑ "Bill Posters Welcome Here". www.nla.gov.au. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  11. ↑ "The story of Australian printmaking 1801-2005". nga.gov.au. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  12. ↑ "For the man who said life wasn't meant to be easy - make life impossible". nga.gov.au. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  13. ↑ Flinders University Museum of Art
  14. ↑ "See you at the barricades: Declarations". www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  15. ↑ "Posters from the Earthworks Collective and Tin Sheds". collection.maas.museum. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
  16. ↑ Tsara, Olga. "The Art of Revolution: Political Posters in the Red Planet Archive - No 75 Autumn 2005". latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
  17. ↑ "Marie McMahon - Printing in Three Registers. (1989) by Ewington, Julie. · Australian Prints + Printmaking". www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  18. ↑ "Posters". Jessie Street National Women's Library. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  19. ↑ Robertson, Toni (1977). Writing on the fence is better than sitting on the fence. Sydney: Earthworks Poster Collective.
  20. ↑ "Mark Arbuz - Doug Ashdown & Kirk Laorange. - Search the Collection, National Gallery of Australia". National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 24 February 2023.
  21. ↑ "Arbuz, Mark. (1953–) · Related works · Australian Prints + Printmaking". printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 24 February 2023.
  22. ↑ "LUCIFOIL POSTER COLLECTIVE (1980–1983) · Related works · Australian Prints + Printmaking". www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  23. ↑ The Ultimato Show: 3 nights of women's music, martial arts, dancing & theatre, 1982, retrieved 31 October 2020
  24. ↑ McMahon, Marie; Phoenix, Frances; Women's Domestic Needlework Group; Earthworks Poster Collective (1979), Women who toiled, OCLC   691151402 , retrieved 31 October 2020
  25. ↑ "Eye Magazine | Feature | Political clout: Australian posters". www.eyemagazine.com. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
  26. ↑ "Poster, 1988". Museums Victoria Collections. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  27. ↑ "ABOUT BOOMALLI". Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-op. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  28. ↑ "Poster, 1988". Museums Victoria Collections. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  29. ↑ B.U.G.A. U.P (1979), I, object: If you object to advertising sexploitation, lend a can to the B.U.G.A. U.P. campaign , retrieved 31 October 2020
  30. ↑ "BUGA-UP". www.bugaup.org. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  31. ↑ Bailey, Stuart (2018). "Redback Graphix and its aftermath" (PDF). Fresh Blood. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  32. ↑ Printmaking, Prints and. "ACME INK". printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  33. ↑ Printmaking, Prints and. "Bitumen River Gallery presents -". printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  34. ↑ Printmaking, Prints and. "Bitumen River Gllery presents - Off the beach". printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  35. ↑ "Mother Nature is a Lesbian: Political Printmaking in South Australia 1970s-1980s". Artlink Magazine. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  36. ↑ "Australian Political Posters | FUMA". Flinders University. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
  37. ↑ NFAW and The University of Melbourne. "Women's Art Movement - Organisation - The Australian Women's Register". www.womenaustralia.info. Archived from the original on 28 October 2004. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  38. ↑ "May Day poster". collection.maas.museum. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  39. ↑ hutr. "Posters Empowering Community: A Historical Snapshot of SA Poster Artmaking". www.unisa.edu.au. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  40. ↑ "The Trades Hall Poster collection – University of Melbourne Archives" . Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  41. ↑ "Dance against the new right". AGSA - Online Collection. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  42. ↑ "Community poster, 'Our Land is Our Life', paper, designed by Kurwingie (Kerry Giles) with Deborah Kelly and Kate Breakey at Co-Media, Adelaide, South Australia, 1988". collection.maas.museum. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  43. ↑ Phoenix, Frances (1985), Southern Women's Health and Community Centre: a service by women with women ... drop in for a cuppa or a chat , retrieved 31 October 2020
  44. ↑ Northcott, Sarah (2018). "Catalogue: The history of Prospect in posters" (PDF). Prospect Council. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  45. ↑ Printmaking, Prints and. "MANTIS PRINTS". www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  46. 1 2 Williamson, Clare & Queensland Art Gallery Signs of the times : political posters in Queensland. Qld. Art Gallery, South Brisbane, Qld, 1991. https://remix.org.au/RemixPDFPublications/fullPDFSIgnoftheTimes.pdf
  47. ↑ Williamson, Clare (2008). "Cram guide 2008: Rebel Posters!" (PDF). 3CR. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 November 2011. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  48. ↑ "Black Banana Poster Collective". ARI Remix - A Polyvocal Memory of Australian Artist-Run Culture and Heritage "Work in Progress". 13 June 2015. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  49. ↑ Printmaking, Prints and. "Cabaret". www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  50. ↑ "Jalak Graphics | MCA Australia". www.mca.com.au. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  51. ↑ "JALAK GRAPHICS (1982–) · Related works · Australian Prints + Printmaking". www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au. Retrieved 30 October 2020.

For images of posters, go to these sites.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.