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by bacblogarts

The Garage Graphix Community Art Workshop Poster Archive Statement of Significance provides a formal assessment of nearly 400 posters produced at Garage Graphix premises in Western Sydney across the period 1981 – 1998. This report, commissioned by Blacktown Arts and funded by the National Library’s Community Heritage Grant Program, found the poster archive to be of national significance and deserving of accession into the care of Blacktown Arts and Blacktown City Council to enable preservation, exhibition, research and community access.

The Archive’s importance is manifold: It is representative and reflects upon a place and point in time in Australia where a radical form of community-based arts practice was birthed, grew and flourished alongside social and political activism. More so, the assembled content of the Garage Graphix archive is a foundation document for the emergence and character of modern Blacktown. It reveals the depth of community involvements, passion and concerns in seeking to secure rights and improve local and individual circumstance. It shows also the joyousness, pride and self-belief of this community in contrast to many official historical narrations of Western Sydney. As such it is an extraordinarily important collection for this community’s understanding of its nascent and maturing self.

Dr Lee-Anne Hall
Author
Garage Graphix Community Art Workshop Poster Archive Statement of Significance, April 2021

Garage Graphix Reports

Garage Graphix artworks have been included in major exhibitions, articles and essays, Numerous artworks have been acquired for national and state public collections.

Below are reports and a select bibliography, designed to help researchers who would like to discover more about Garage Graphix.

Exhibitions

Know My Name – National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (Nov 2020-Nov 2021).

Nirin, Sydney Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art (April-August 2020).

Garage Graphix, Penrith Regional Gallery (May – Oct 2018).

It’s Our Thing’, Blacktown Arts Centre (2016), Curators – Kon Gouriotis and Paul Howard.

Out of line: 25 years of Women’s Posters, State Library of NSW (1995)

Hearts and Minds: Australian Political Posters of the 1970s and 1980s, State Library of NSW (1993)

The Pemulwuy Dilemma – The Voice of Koori Art the Sydney Region, Penrith Regional Gallery (1991)

Signs of Survival – An exhibition of Aboriginal Art in the West to coincide with Invasion Day 1989, Street Level Gallery, Penrith (1989)

Right Here, Right Now – Australia 1988, Adelaide Festival Visual Arts program,

Experimental Art Foundation and national tour (1988-89), Curator, Lee-Anne Hall.

Shocking Diversity, Print Council of Australia, (1987-1988, national tour)

Aboriginal Australian Views in Print and Poster, Print Council of Australia (1987 national touring exhibition).

Political Poster-making Organisations (group show), National Community Arts Conference, Adelaide (1986)

Women and Creativity (1982)

Know My Name: Australian Women Artists to Know 1900 to Now, National Gallery Australia (2021).

Writing

Bailey, S. Murray, W., Marcello, F. (2018) Fresh Blood – Redback Graphix and its Aftermath, exhibition catalogue, Casula Powerhouse. Blacktown City Council, P000 498.2 Art Collection Policy, 2011

Butler, R. 1999, “From Walls to Webs” Contemporary Poster Art in Australia, Art and Australia, Vol 39, no 1 (p 102-107)

Butler, R. 1993, The Streets as Art Galleries – Walls Sometimes Speak, Poster Art in Australia, National Gallery of Australia.

Dunt, N. 2018, Investigating the Aesthetic Character of Australian Urban Indigenous Art – A Socio-Political Fusion, unpublished PhD, Flinders University. “dunt” garage graphix.

Guppy, M. (2019) Suburban Life in Print: Engaging community in the pre-digital decade (PDF). 2019 Ursula Hoff Essay. In Imprint. The Quarterly Journal of the Print Council of Australia, Volume 54 Number 4.

Hall, LA. 1987, Who is Bill Posters? Caper 27, Australia Council.

Hall, LA. 2000, Indigenous Political Poster making in the 1970s and 1980s, in Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Eds, Kelienert, S. and Neale, M. Melbourne, Oxford University Press.

Hawkins, G. 1993, From Nimbin to Gay Mardi Gras – Constructing Community Arts, Sydney, Allen and Unwin.

Kenyon, T. 1995, Under a Hot Tin Roof: art, passion and politics at the Tin Sheds Art Workshop Sydney, State Library of NSW.

Knight, K. 2013, Passion, Purpose Meaning- Arts Activism in western Sydney Merewether, C. and Stephen, A. (eds), 1977, The Great Divide.

Mayhew, L.  2011. Jill Posters Will Be Prosecuted: Australia’s women-only print collectives from the 1970s and 1980s, paper presented at Impact7: Intersections and Counterpoints, Monash University, 2011.

Rowse, T. 1985, Arguing the Arts: the Funding of Arts in Australia, Penguin Press, Melbourne, Vic.

Sandback, K. 2013, ‘Westies’ No More: Towards a more inclusive and Authentic Place identity, in, Duxbury, N. (ed), Conference proceedings, Cescontexeous – Rethinking Urban Inclusion, Spaces, Mobilizations and Interventions,
Garage Graphix takes a Bow, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July 1991 (p16)

Winkworth, K. and Russel, R. 2009, Significance 2.0

Wu, Yu Ye, 2016, Q+A with Michael Agzarian, NAVA website, 21 Sept 2016.

Zagala, A. 2008, Redback Graphix, National Gallery of Australia.

Lally, E, and Lee Shoy, T. (nd) Networking Culture: A Strategic Approach to Networking Culture in Greater western Sydney

Jones, G. 2019, Art of Engagement: Practice-led research into concepts of urban Aboriginal art and heritage. unpublished PhD, Australian National University